The moral of this story is: it is human nature that when we have something, we do not want to lose it. This is an entirely different paradigm between what we do when we do not have something. It explains why the wealthy are so toxic. Their only goal in life is not to lose what they have.

I worked at a well respected technical company and was given the task of evaluating a small company that we could acquire. I looked at the technology -something anyone could put together in a day. I looked at the business model. It was that you get free storage if you get a friend to sign up for free storage!!

I told the company that it had no technology and a business model that made no sense. They bought the company. Why? Because the target company told them that other companies were interested - and they were.

They did not want to miss the boat and lose what they had. Nothing came from this acquired company. Meanwhile the fundamental technology was disrupted by something new and the company fell apart. End of story. This is common.

So AI? This is about not missing the boat. Someplace, somewhere there is value in AI, but for now, if you have missed the boat you are probably better off. So no, this is not (as the current top comment says) about "they couldn't sell their software". This is about a very real reason why companies try to not miss the boat rather than innovate.

[ASIDE] And I cannot help but laugh at the Clojure reference with the statement "two things are simple if they are not intertwined". I have always been interested in Clojure, but I never go there because it is not "simple". It is intertwined with Java which I know all to well and do not love. Java was the language of choice at this same company and I wasted too many months of my life bowing before that cumbersome language.

Commenting on the aside: that was my first reaction as well (years ago). But really you can treat it mostly as having a mature runtime and freebies and get a lot out of the language. Many who use and like Clojure, don’t necessarily like Java the language, or have similar reservations like you.