I think what is much more plausible is that companies such as this one benefit greatly from being viewed as being close to, or on the way to AGI.
I always like the phrase, "follow the money", in situations like this. Are OpenAI or Microsoft close to AGI? Who knows... Is there a monetary incentive to making you believe they are close to AGI? Absolutely. Take in this was the first bullet point in Microsoft's blog post.