With an annual profit of between $3 to $4 Billion dollars, it is not hard to imagine that in an alternate universe such a company might just send off some "donations" to key developers for the several coins they make hardware for mining, thus keeping any proactive changes to stop them at a minimum.
Now before anyone gets all riled up, note that I said in a hypothetical alternate universe and I am not accusing anyone of anything. I am sure in our universe things are not that way and everyone is open and honest about their intentions. It wouldn't really be bribery anyway, just more a form of lobbying for their preferences as to which direction the coin goes.
Even CNBC - which is NOT known for it's high-quality fact checking - presented that as a RUMOR, not as fact.
Known sales figures out of Bitmain make it plausable they might have managed a few billion in SALES in 2017, but even with their margins it's doubtful they had more PROFIT than Nvidia had (on MUCH higher sales).
They've also made mistakes - their Cryptonite miner will be DEAD IN THE WATER for the most part before they start delivering it (Monero has ALREADY forked to kill it, ETN has announced they'll be forking SOON for the same reason and probably will use the code and algorithm Monero moved to, there goes 90% of the current CN hashrate between those two leaving almost NO market for a CN miner at all even if NONE of the other CN coins change algorithm).
Their E3 is not looking too impressive either, though they probably will manage to sell some of them at the price they set on it.
Their SIA and X11 miners have overflooded the small markets to the point I doubt Bitmain could GIVE more of them away - and past the first batch on each I suspect they are going to end up LOSING MONEY to move the remaining production of both of those.
The biggest reason Bitmain still sells is that every other miner makers makes it an active PAIN for folks other than HUGE FARMS to buy their products, even where they ARE superior (A4, A5) or comparable (841, L21, others).