Nobody gets access to the money privately. The grant is paid out in salaries for work instead of capital gains. There's no capital investment for the grant.
Of course grants are an economic incentive to do something. But not all economic incentives are profit.
Edit: To be clear, universities as such don't generally apply for research grants. Researchers in universities do, and for getting a grant they get the luxury of working for a salary for a few years, or getting somebody else to be paid for their work. Universities do take a cut (overheads) from the grants to nominally pay for infra and admin etc, but in reality a lot of it is spent on all kinds of non-related things like teaching and alumni dinners and chauffeurs for the provost.
