Binary stars play critical roles across a wide range of astrophysical contexts, including the formation of exotic stellar objects and planetary systems, the progenitors of supernovae, and the sources of gravitational waves. They are widely believed —both from theoretical models and, more recently, from observational evidence— to be a primary channel for the formation of hot subdwarfs (sdO/B stars). Here we report an unexpected result that only about 40% of companions in a golden sample of wide hot subdwarf binaries exhibit measurable rotational signals attributable to magnetic modulation, based on a comprehensive survey of nearly 5000 TESS and Kepler sdO/B targets. Their rotation periods are predominantly shorter than 5 days, a distribution strikingly different from that of single field MS stars, whose rotation periods peak around 20 days. This markedly faster rotation suggests that the old MS companions in wide sdO/B binaries must have undergone a spin-up process through past mass accretion, as their rotation rates are comparable to those of much younger MS stars in open clusters. However, the absence of any detectable rotational signal in the remaining ～60% of companions, even among relatively bright targets, poses a challenge to the commonly held view that sdO/B formation universally requires binary interaction.