I have a curious question, is Platform Engineering a Hybrid of DevOps and ITIL Service Delivery/Management: as it matures, evolves and automates in maturation levels 4 and 5 ?

(I don't know anything about ITIL) Platform engineering is not really DevOps imo. When you move your software engineering teams to a DevOps approach, platform engineering as a central function helps enable self service for those teams. How mature the processes the individual teams have in service delivery might vary a lot between teams.

Well Puppet and those who write the State of DevOps report (2023/2024 versions) see DevOps being subsumed as late stage maturity into Platform Engineering emergent maturation. ITIL is service delivery, and self service delivery, and Platform Engineering is a fusion of DevOps mechanical tooling and processes, along with ITIL: ITIL is about service strategy, definition, transition planning and service operations. I see Platform Engineering as a taking the DevOps user focus (the end users of the service) and layering ITIL over the DevOps processes/automations and self servicing. Well from a past Service Delivery type. And DevOps student.