IH wanted anything but a mature, commercially viable technology - rather something that indeed is "a billion dollars away from being a practical machine". Because this distance means control. Control by those who can invest such sums.
That is nonsense. It is not possible to develop major technology in the 21st century without spending billions of dollars. The regulatory hurdles alone demand that kind of money. That is why Toyota spent about $1 billion to develop the Prius. Compared to Rossi's device, the Prius is a minor incremental improvement to existing technology. Rossi's device would cost far more than this, although I.H. would only need to pay a small fraction of the total. Industrial corporations, national laboratories and others will have to spend tens of billions or hundreds of billions to make the device into a safe and practical source of energy.
The payback will be roughly $1 billion per day, so the cost will be trivial in comparison.
Comments such as Timar's reveal that he does not understand modern industry, research and development, or technology. This is not 1825 when you can roll out a radically new technology such as a railroad without years of testing & preparation to ensure safety. The public will not stand for that. Note that when the first railroad opened to the public in Britain, the locomotive ran over and killed one of the dignitaries because people were not even told they had stand out of the way, and the locomotive was travelling at an unprecedented speed (about 20 mph, I think).