Maybe Gates saw, that although the Altair was a great demonstrator of the groundbreaking Intel 8080 it was built around, real user value was yet to be delivered

Maybe Gates saw, that although the Altair was a great demonstrator of the groundbreaking Intel 8080 it was built around, real user value was yet to be delivered by either successors or competitors to the Altair. Maybe Gates saw the value in his BASIC implementation and wanted to maintain the option to sell it to other home computer manufacturers.