Marketing of some sort. Either “come to Google and you’ll have access to H100s and freedom to publish and get to work with other people who publish good papers”, which appeals to the best researchers, or for smaller companies, benchmark pushing to help with brand awareness and securing VC funding.

It's commonly discussed in AI/ML groups that a paper at a top conference is "worth a million dollars." Not all papers, some papers are worth more. But it is in effect discussing the downstream revenues. As a student, it is your job and potential earnings. As a lab it is worth funding and getting connected to big tech labs (which creates a feedback loop). And to corporations, it is worth far more than that in advertising.

The unfortunate part of this is that it can have odd effects like people renaming well known things to make the work appear more impressive, obscure concepts, and drive up their citations.[0] The incentives do not align to make your paper as clear and concise as possible to communicate your work.

[0] https://youtu.be/Pl8BET_K1mc?t=2510