I agree with you in essence, that large companies are intelligences built upon the substrate of many human minds, and that a company's motivations often diverge

I agree with you in essence, that large companies are intelligences built upon the substrate of many human minds, and that a company's motivations often diverge from those of the humans that compose them. I'd go further and say that companies are alive (or at least independently intelligent) in a real sense. Companies are lively: "If you prick us, do we not bleed? [...] and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" They will lobby and sue to protect their interests, butt heads with other rival corporations, and hold grudges. However, I've found it difficult to convince anyone that we should consider companies alive, or at least entities that are qualitatively different in intelligence from the humans that enable them. The argument usually centers on that a company is just a bunch of humans, so it is best understood as such. However, the 'more is different' effect (e.g. you can better understand a human as an independent entity than as a bunch of cells even though it is entirely composed of them), and the selection pressure molding corporations (optimizing profit), I believe leads to a new type of collective intelligence (one different from human intelligence) -- basically a true AI, as you are arguing.