This might just be stereotype. As a single data point, I work at a large boring non-tech company - my team's ML runs on Kubernetes just like the cool kids do it.

I've seen a lot of modern tech from other large companies too (banks, retailers etc.) - the culture and pace of development might be different but their tech stacks are very up to date. Even if some of those companies have an old mainframe still running somewhere, they have tonnes of other software too, most of it much more up to date.