https://ir.thomsonreuters.com/news-releases/news-release-det...
It's likely split between two goals:
1. Marketing and expressing to their customers that they are not falling behind, and
2. Insulating themselves from frontier labs jacking up prices, nerfing the models they depend on, or otherwise unexpected changes in behavior.
I think the main goal is #2. Thomson Reuters might be a $40B company, but.... at this point it's not clear that that holds any weight in terms of not being fucked over by 2 companies aiming for $2t+ IPO valuations.
Edit: On second thought, there is probably a #3 too. They can serve inference for their own models significantly cheaper than frontier lab rates (assuming they're capturing continuous use of their hardware). I still think #2 is the primary goal.
It's exactly the same sorta thinking re; Microsoft potentially fucking over the PC videogames industry that Valve used to justify the zillions of dollars and countless man-hours put into their big push for Linux gaming rather than tie themselves to a single proprietary company that could try to kick them out of the gaming industry. So far it's going pretty well for them. Depending on how they play their cards, this could also work out really well for Thomson Reuters as well.
Like how Bloomberg does news but its far from their only or primary product. TR covers a different surface of data products than Bloomberg but it's a decent comparison.