I agree they want the face data, but I think it's less clear they want to "hand it" (presumably that's really "sell it"?) to third parties. My sense is Google and Apple and Meta are amassing data for their own uses, but I haven't gotten the impression they're very interested in sharing it?

Sharing it is bad for business; selling insights derived from it for ad placement is the game. Faces definitely contain some useful information for that purpose.

They’ll do whatever makes money.

Sell it and use it internally.

you are correct. having that data is one of their competitive advantages, it makes no sense to sell it. they will collect as much as possible and monetize it through better ads, but they don't sell it