I don't know about that. Something I think a lot of people sleep on with this stuff is that most countries have multiple security agencies, and you generally cut deals with them individually. The market for this stuff is bigger than it looks.
I was mostly thinking that the customers / clients you have and services you have to offer can be largely dependent by people in positions of power where having the right connections and influence might be the key difference between a service or product being viable.
For example - although not related to NSO - something like operation Trojan Shield required both Australian and Lithuanian cooperation due to fourth amendment interpretations.
Having a zero day in such cases is only part of the work and everything beyond that might be very much dependant on the strings you can pull.
But I can also see the argument that that would be something the government can figure out after they buy the product or service, so maybe I'm wrong on that and it's less important than I thought.
(Generally, I don't think countries just "buy exploits"; a significant component of the money in this space comes from "maintenance", so much so that I think it makes more sense to think of exploits as subscription services.)
I think this makes sense, especially given the uncertainty of when an exploit gets patched.
To my original argument of political power vs valuations you can probably say that having those same people you'd otherwise try to influence on your board with a financial incentive allows you to achieve the same thing, I'm not sure why I didn't consider that before.