>What I don't understand is, what benefit is there for 99% of companies to get in on the ground floor of LLMs?
Wallstreet. These companies are largely based on increasing the share price. That's what shareholders want, that's what the board wants, and that's what the C-suite, compensated mostly in stock, wants. Nothing really matters except increasing the stock price, and right now the AI bubble is so damn superheated that if you do not announce something AI, you might be punished in the stock market as investors pull their money and put it somewhere that is willing to bullshit in order to collect some of that sweet hype money.
Because the vast majority of the stock market is literally a "greater fool" system. The point is not to make good companies that will enrich you with strong dividends forever, but rather to pump and dump. The entire point of the public market (for public companies) is that you can bullshit, pump up your stock price, and then dump those pumped up stocks onto a fool because you know the company isn't nearly as valuable as the stock says it is.
Private investors are so goddamned wealthy nowadays that it makes zero sense to engage with the public stock market, and the regulation and demands that it requires of you, unless you are trying to dump on bagholders.
Your average trader is so goddamned stupid you can literally run a company with no fundamentals and no plan and have a $13 billion market cap. Your entire business can be "sell shares repeatedly to these same losers who are blatantly illiterate, can't do basic math, and are outright gambling addicts" and retire on the free money that these people THANK YOU for taking. You can openly enrich yourself off these idiots, and they will vote for it willingly!
The point of being on the public market is to attempt to take advantage of these people and take their money.