If they really didn't see anything in it (be it profit or wanting to get to market "first"), then there wouldn't be so many large firms investing in their own blockchain tech.

It's called hedging bets. That's how you become an established player.

You hire 50k people and throw 5/10 at block chain just to make sure you don't get caught with your pants down. That's barely an investment.

They will acquihire when the time is right. They have absolutely no need to do any in-house tech whatsoever.

Permissioned blockchains contain almost none of the interesting properties of a public, untrusted-node blockchain, and function mostly as a signed-transaction append-only database.

Investment (in blockchain tech) by major players does not (in and of itself) prove that they feel threatened by Bitcoin. Blockchain tech can have utility to those players outside of Bitcoin.