Sharing with Virustotal is not same as sharing it with ‘anyone’ i suppose, possibility of downloading files is not acceptable.
That, to me, qualifies the term "VirusTotal and their partners" as accurate, since this is only a select group of companies who are paying VT a large sum for access to the data.
[0] https://www.virustotal.com/en/documentation/private-api/#fil...
Whatever number they charge, it is negligible for the trove of data you'll get!