The lottery thing might denote simply financial distress so they need to get money in as fast as possible at the cost of reputation. However that doesn't sound promising either...
How can they be in financial distress? They've built an FPGA and have no overheads yet.
More likely a bit of a silly PR move to get funds together to place a significant chip order that's required ASAP.
In any case it's silly as it's pre openday and they should have held back taking funds until after the open day, unless their schedule is that tight.
They have delayed the openday by almost two weeks though...