Can you clarify what you mean by “owns the STEEM chain”? Steemit, inc does own quite a bit of STEEM tokens and they aren’t currently voting for any witnesses though, technically, nothing prevents them from doing so (other than economic rational self-interest).
This has been discussed at length by witnesses so I wouldn’t call it the elephant in the room. Some ideas thrown around include making their accounts non-voting accounts and adjusting the savings system to have a variable lock-up time so their tokens could be locked up via smart contract. There’s talk of them using their holdings to support SMT launches, but that’s speculation at this point. The main reason for the funds (as far as I know) was to pay for the onboarding faucet, but now that we have delegation (and the possibility of some form of account mining in the future), it’s a little less clear what the funds are for.
Clarifying what those are used for should be priority one if you ask me.