Ostensibly, a lab somewhere that had experts in a field of interest could merit funding so as to better understand that field, in this case, a pathogen.
One thought is the COVID 19 was a precursor to something more deadly and leaked prematurely by accident. Another thought is that it was relatively "innocent" experimentation to understand how the virus might evolve/change in nature.
We'll never know for sure, I think. It was pretty deadly for older folks with poor immune systems.