I'm guessing Soros doesn't actually expect to make a great deal of money from these. It seems like by making an investment, he will help create a self-sustaining set of business solutions rather than a donation. There is reasonable evidence that "top-down" donations a la Jeffrey Sachs do not work, and that helping people build tools creates an incentive to tackle solvable problems first, then iterate until a reasonable patchwork set of solutions/companies are effective.