Haha it's normally given in place of cash (or partially) and...

Haha it's normally given in place of cash (or partially) and should be equivalent to what they'd expect in cash otherwise, typically if the company is trying to limit cash burn (or use cash elsewhere) it can be more preferable to do it that way. The employees can ultimately sell their shares on market if they wish, or can hold onto those shares. So it's not really a big thing, whether it's cash funded from issuing of capital previously, or just directly issuing capital it's really just semantics. The ultimate result all round is pretty much the same, especially with placements of that size.

Again just speculating of course, they don't give enough details to be sure.