The money raised is being used to support the new business model, which is described on another frontpaged article. The new business model was in response to the failure described here.

Joel and Jeff wanted to raise money for StackOverflow, not for StackExchange. But maybe the VCs couldn't see the value in having three site and licensing the software to another company(Fog Creek), so the obvious way was to fold StackExchange into the StackOverflow company. I think only time will tell if this was the right decision.

No. They successfully raised money for StackExchange. That is part of the reason for the change. Here is the post from the blog explaining the change. http://blog.stackexchange.com/post/518474918/stack-exchange-...

I meant, that the VCs didn't gave them the money for the old style of StackExchange sites. Before this change the StackExchange plattform was licensed from StackOverflow and operated by Fog Creek.

I guess the questions that now comes up is:

Did they make the change because they raised money and are now able to do this, or have they changed it because this was the only way to raise money?