Yup, this. I've recently interacted with someone whose board pushed for a company-wide coding assistant rollout, with the explicit goal of reducing development staff, or rather costs. The developers weren't really asking for it, but leadership assumes that they wouldn't, if it could make them redundant.

Seems like getting decisions made at that level can be extremely valuable, and at the same time lets you get away with building something that just seems like a useful product - because the people you're selling to won't use it. And furthermore, they will already go into this assuming resistance from the actual users, so they're unlikely to even listen to their feedback.

Of course it's not a long term strategy, but it seems like a potent short term money maker.