Help me understand. The purpose is to help founders get sales contracts? What's the value for the buyers? Acquire people before they become competitors?

Usually the rule of a CTO/CIO is to foster innovation. Getting a custom solution from a big name VC helps then fulfil their JD within the company.

understand what founders are building, which helps them deploy AI internally. you'd be surprised how hard this is to do in a big (tech) company. also, yes there is a peer group aspect.