> And so stayed up several nights and wrote tight C++ code to line up the data and raced the private team over the finish line.

I don't understand. Why would the university team have to finish it before the private team? If the private team finished it and encumbered access to the output, and the university team finished a short while later, wouldn't that have the same effect? Or would there some sort of funding drop-off once the task was achieved, that wouldn't account for whether the output was made accessible?