A no-investment policy would take them off the scene entirely. Essentially handing over the reins to OpenAI, Google, and others. Their position is something close to "if I don't do it, someone worse will".

Related: https://80000hours.org/2012/03/the-replaceability-effect-wor...

There's a more nuanced discussion that could be had about how to balance relevance with outside influence. But at a foundational level it should be acknowledged that the tradeoff exists, and that receiving outside investment can't alone be seen as evidence of corruption.

Besides that, there's more that can be said about other things like their corporate structure or the degree to which they accelerated the AI race.