Really? Even if they were working on a merely difficult problem, you would expect coding to be the very last step of the project. People don't solve hard algorithmic problems by writing some code and seeing what happens. I wouldn't expect an organization working optimally on AGI to write any code until after making some remarkable progress on the problem.
IMO, there's a pretty good chance of an existing organisation being involved with getting there first. The main problem with not having any working products is that it is challenging to accumulate resources - which are needed to hire researchers and programmers - which you need to fuel your self-improvement cycle.
Google, hedge funds, and security agencies have their self-improvement cycle already rolling - they are evidently getting better and better as time passes. That results in accumulated resources, which can be used to drive further development.
If you were a search company who aimed directly at a human-level search agent, you are now up against a gorilla with an android army who already has most of the pieces of the puzzle. Waiting until you have done all the relevant R+D is just not how software development works. You get up and running as fast as you can - or else someone else does that first - and eats your lunch.
Taken from some old comments of mine that never did get a satisfactory answer.
1) One of the justifications for CEV was that extrapolating from an American in the 21st century and from Archimedes of Syracuse should give similar results. This seems to assume that change in human values over time is mostly "progress" rather than drift. Do we have any evidence for that, except saying that our modern values are "good" according to themselves, so whatever historical process led to them must have been "progress"?
2) How can anyone sincerely want to build an AI that fulfills anything except their own current, personal volition? If Eliezer wants the the AI to look at humanity and infer its best wishes for the future, why can't he task it with looking at himself and inferring his best idea to fulfill humanity's wishes? Why must this particular thing be spelled out in a document like CEV and not left to the mysterious magic of "intelligence", and what other such things are there?