What is the interest of companies in Open Source?

Is there an interest of hi-tech companies to encourage their employees to contribute to open source projects? Why? Which projects?

I asked ChatGPT and got the answer I pasted below, but I'd love to get your insight!

Yes, there is real and growing interest from hi-tech companies to encourage open source contributions. It serves their technical, business, and cultural goals. The exact projects vary, but generally align with what the company uses, depends on, or wants to shape.

1. Strategic Influence & Ecosystem Shaping
   By contributing to widely-used open source projects, companies can influence the direction of technologies they rely on (e.g., Linux, Kubernetes, Python).
   This ensures features they need get prioritized, and bugs that affect them get fixed faster.

2. Improved Developer Productivity
   Developers who contribute to open source projects (especially ones they use at work) gain deep insight and improve their own skills.
   This can lead to better in-house development practices and fewer bugs.

3. Talent Attraction & Retention
   Allowing developers to publish open source work helps build their public portfolio, which is attractive for many engineers.
   Developers value companies that give back to the community and support open culture.

4. Brand Building & Reputation
   Being known as an open source-friendly company helps build credibility among developers and customers.
   It can position a company as a thought leader in a particular tech domain.

5. Security & Transparency
   By engaging with open source communities, companies can spot vulnerabilities earlier and even participate in patching them.
   Transparency also improves trust, especially in areas like infrastructure, cryptography, and AI.