Yes, of course people would be working there for the paycheck.

I think there's nothing special about public funding though. The field is so competitive that people will be mad if a competitive model is not achieved, making corruption more damaging to the organizations. There would also be some internal competition. There are after all several EU LLM/AI/etc. firms that would probably try to use this infrastructure.

By paycheck I meant that they get the money through corruption. Like fake bills, bloated estimates and huge commissions, but in the surface it all looks legal and they get away stealing millions of euros of public money of hardworking tax payers.

I guarantee you that maybe people would get mad that no competitive model is achieved because the politicians burned the tax payers money. But there would be no repercussions, nobody would be held accountable and would just be marked as a failed project.

I think the bigger issue of public funding and corruption, is that usually these contracts are awarded to "friends" with the purpose of 100% mismanaging and stealing as much of the funds.