Why is it that companies choose to pay developers to write software? It's definitely not because software has any degree of intrinsic value.
Companies fund software products (and by extension software developers) because they derive significant business value from those products.
Software companies develop and sell software because it meets some identified market demand. Value is provided to the customer via some task (e.g. photo editing) they are now able to complete in a more productive way. Value is provided to the software company in the form of revenue and profits.