But that isn’t the claim. The claim is an agentic pen tester “trounced” human testers. Static analysis tools are already trivial and cheap to automate, why would you need an agent in the loop?

I agree with your point that the claim is exagerated. My counterpoint is even if they are subpar, they will still make business sense if they are inexpensive, much in the same way that Static code analysis tools aren't great but because they are inexpensive they still make sense during development.