I use to work for a department in a large university responsible for licensing patents and technology and managing external relationships.
The University is bounded by restrictions built into contracts that prevent it from licensing technology / patents / or other research to multiple parties, especially parties with competing interests. This was pretty standard language in most of the contracts that were signed, unless there were specific other clauses.
The University is not looking to invest in companies or be in any specific industry. Rather the goal of the department and university was to establish long streams of royalty that would ultimately reward professors for all their years of research and work.
In addition, the university takes a substantial cut of the royalty payments and is able to leverage these relationships with large corporations to build more scholarship funding and establish themselves as a key feeder school for these companies.
My university saw these patents and technology as a strategic advantage, not just for the revenue stream, honors and recognition, but also another way of creating future companies and jobs for the next graduating class.
Pyrr has laid out all of the qualitative benefits.