At that time made sense to stick to keep the image. But eventually money > image. I have no doubt they will do whatever it takes to keep going. Even if that means killing people.
It's extremely bizarre to think Anthropic of all companies will kill people, given that they are probably the only tech company in the modern era that has demonstrated some moral backbone, even under threat of being shut down. There are way more companies at the top of the list here that have no moral compass, like Meta etc.