Arguably, the point of a startup isn’t to make money, it’s to attract attention and then investors.
Once the business is making money it’s not really a startup any more, it’s a going concern.
OP is an undergrad student. Attracting attention is what will make them stand out. And sharing research at this stage will probably expose them to research others don’t want to publish but do want to share with other researchers.
I'm saying that there's no difference between doing it for money and doing it for the attention of investors, because investors are also money.
OP's startup is publishing because they think there's an economic advantage to doing so. That's not good or bad; it just is.
Very, very few things in the tech world are done "just because". Even fewer things when we're talking about AI being developed in the US. For better or for worse, the leadership in that segment of our field has established profit motive as their god.
To rephrase it more bluntly: the difference between normal business and a modern startup is that between a cow bred for milking vs. a pig bred for slaughter.