If you want to get really pedantic about it, a company is not a "group of people": a company is a particular legal structure for organising a profit-making enterprise. So yes, it is an inanimate entity.

When we say things like "that Lions football team suffered a crushing defeat", we're engaging in metonymy -- referring to the suffering of the members of the team but speaking metaphorically about "the team".

We'll have to agree to disagree here. I don't think whatever arbitrary legal structure there is around a group of people somehow makes the organization not human.

For example, I think it's perfectly normalized to say "that Detroit Lions team suffered a crushing defeat", even though the Detroit Lions are a profit-making enterprise.

I'll go with, there is a group of people involved with a corporation, but it's largely decoupled from the corporation itself.

The group of people are the labourers being exploited, and they're separate from the group of owners that the corporation represents.