I wouldn't call it an outright scam. But yes, you pay yourself a nice salary, travel around the world to meet potential OEMs, you may fly in private jets, you stay in fancy hotels, you have business meetings in Michelin star restaurants.

The motorcycle is real, you can buy it.

I worked for a company in Germany in 2024 and the CEO was quite open about using public grant money as a free gift. The company wasn't build around it but it was a significant part of income. He made engineers sign papers that they had worked on some AI stuff which they didn't. A demonstrator was made with yolo by an intern. He said they have just no competency to figure that out and also that they actually don't want to figure it out.

Or look at the EuroLLM: sounds good on paper, never heard about it again. Grant grabbing is a real industry in Europe with companies specialised on creating grant applications and forming consortiums.