[senko]

Mostly.

Many of these companies do build up internal know-how.

In case of big consulting companies, they have huge internal knowledge bases, decks, cases etc from previous engagements. In case of product companies with FDEs, the feedback from customers ideally trickles down to product improvements. In case of OpenAI, they can improve their models.

Whether that's actually valuable enough to turn a blind eye to the downsides of consulting, I don't know.