There's two points here. The first is that a strategy of monetizing models to fund the goal of reaching AI is indistinguishable from just running a business selling LLM model access, you don't actually need to be trying to reach AGI you can just run an LLM company and that is probably what these companies are largely doing. The AGI talk is just a recruiting/marketing strategy.

Secondly, it's not clear that the current LLMs are a run up to AGI. That's what LeCun is betting - that the LLM labs are chasing a local maxima.