Yes, I agree that we can’t let them dictate the pace. Let me try to express my thoughts more clearly. Couldn’t we have something like The Linux Foundation for Fediverse? It has many corporate members including Google, Microsoft.
Some corporations can be partners to a ActivityPub foundation and contribute to the codebase of the protocol. The foundation itself needs to be independent to steer the features and technical direction according to the Fediverse principles.
As you said just because this is mostly run by volunteers, it need not be an inferior product. But some thought on what I said above might make it something that is adopted by the general populace as well.