Thanks for confirming, that makes sense (it still sounds hard, but not impossible). The article contradicts this -- but it seems likely that the article is simply wrong in that regard.
Agreed that this seems like a misinterpretation by the article’s author. A suborbital trajectory with 2km/s dv can certainly leave the atmosphere before the upper stage starts burning which I think is what SpinLaunch is referring to here. Depending on how you cut it the stated 200,000ft / 60km ignition altitude quoted in the article can already be considered “above the atmosphere.”