Unlike human life, a business is an artificial construct intentionally created for some specific goal. If its creators chose profit to be this goal - which often is the case, explicitly written in the company founding documentation - then that actually is the purpose of that particular business, nothing else, and nothing more, only creation of money for its creators or future owners.
That's a fair point (artifact vs. living thing, a distinction misunderstood by mechanism especially where teleology is concerned). However, artificial does not mean arbitrary. What is artificial follows from human ends, and human ends are ultimately rooted in the ends of human nature (which, strangely enough, we can live in opposition to). Thus, the normative definition of a business would have to be understood in terms of human nature. Of course, financial profit is desirable, but not in itself, but as instrument. Anyone pursuing profit for its own sake is idolizing money as if it were an end in itself.
So the purpose of a business is to create value for others in exchange for profit (profit is money which is a medium of economic exchange) to be used for other valuable ends. That is to say, both of you are partially right, but incomplete.
