If it's achieved by someone else why should we assume that the other person or group will give a damn about anything done by this team?
What influence would this team have on other organizations, especially if you put your dystopia-flavored speculation hat on and imagine a more rogue group...
This team is only relevant to OpenAI and OpenAI-affiliated work and in that case, yes, it's weird to write some marketing press release copy that treats one hard thing as a fait accompli while hyping up how hard this other particular slice of the problem is.
You can't assume that. But that doesn't mean some 3rd party wouldn't be interested in utilizing that research anyway.