I heard about this, as well as the backdrop of what happened. Part of a US history class in high school with a very special teacher who completely despises the "propaganda history books" and always talked about the "true stories".
The energy and transport(railroad) titans of the day (Westinghouse, Carnegie, etc.) realized right away that it would completely obliterate their livelihoods. No need for daily gas or coal transport. No way to profit from electricity transmission. The possibility of completely destroying the nascent automobile industry with three-phase motors powered by wireless electricity (btw, no need for bulky batteries either in this scenario!) With all this, government tax revenues across the world would crater.....
So they banded together and persuaded JP Morgan to abandon funding (JP Morgan was also part of the group, as the banking arm of the titans, he knew right away there are no profits for him either, because there will be no need to endless capital investments/loans).
They then banded together again with Edison to completely discredit Tesla. Hence we have Edison's name on a regional electricity distribution monopoly.......
Don't forget - just like now, all the printing presses, newspapers, radio stations - were owned by the above-named titans. We are lucky the Internet was allowed to roam free long enough to develop alternative news/fact sites!