It's not complete snake oil, it does work it just isn't practical. I'd guess those investors were betting that they could over come the issues of practicality.
You can't overcome basic physics. And this chick is a nutter. Her TEDx was cringey as hell, spending the majority of the time claiming she'd figured out solutions to problems in minutes that PhDs spent years on.
The fact that you'd need a power plant to charge a room full of people's phones isn't some practicality issue. This was absolute nonsense from day 1.
