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The eternal answers from every mining thread: if you need crowdfunding to pay for your NRE or if you would prefer to have USD instead of BTC or if you would prefer to have a certain amount of money now rather than an uncertain amount later, etc.

The most obvious answer is this: you sell the money printing machine for more than the money it would have printed. In other words, anyone selling a mining rig believes that they will make more money from the sale than they would make from actually using the machine. If you buy the rig, you are making the opposite bet.

It is similar to futures trading.

A good question to ponder. But I think a very strong answer is that as a company producing bitcoin hardware you want to reduce exposure to bitcoin. Selling the machines (monetizing their future use value) instead of using them yourself does that to some extent.