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Comment by senordevnyc | Hacker News Reader

This take seems wildly disconnected from reality.

My prediction: this will result in a relatively modest undisclosed settlement and OpenAI won’t abandon, or even modify, their hardware product because of this. And Apple definitely won’t get an “open kimono” to everything OpenAI has planned.

This is two of the largest, most powerful, most well-capitalized companies on the planet in a legal fight. People are taking sides because of their hatred of Sama, and it results in these bizarro takes that OpenAI is finished as a company lol.

Guess we’ll see.

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> This is two of the largest, most powerful, most well-capitalized companies on the planet in a legal fight.

OpenAI being well-capitalized made me laugh out loud, thanks for the humor :)

Apple has a ridiculous amount of cash, AA credit, and makes $100B of net income per year. OpenAI has none of those attributes, what they do have is investors willing to bankroll them, for now.

OpenAI just closed the largest funding round in SV history, $122 billion. The idea that you’d find it laugh out loud funny to call them well-capitalized just reveals your bias.

OpenAI has plenty of cash to fight this. Apple having hundreds of billions doesn’t actually mean anything in a legal fight that might cost OpenAI nine figures in legal fees, maybe? If it goes for years?

A historic judgment against OpenAI (zero chance of that here) might actually drive them out of business, but they’re far beyond the threshold of being well-capitalized enough to fight Apple on this for years.

This is a nothingburger.

> OpenAI just closed the largest funding round in SV history, $122 billion

Chips don’t pay legal bills.

> most well-capitalized companies

Huh what? Since when is OpenAI's IOU's and paper money worth more than Apple's cold hard cash? They have been backing away from their infrastructure commitments and literally pushing their IPO out.

Their "value" might fly with idiot VC's that are willing to throw money at them based on vibes. They are "big" on paper, nothing close to the financial heft of Apple. If anything this is where Sam Altman’s reality-distortion-field isn't going to fly.

> ... it results in these bizarro takes that OpenAI is finished as a company lol.

Meanwhile there's repeated news of OpenAI barely making ends meet and poised to run out of money mid next year. Unfortunately, OpenAI being 'well-capitalized' just doesn't hold up to what we've been actively seeing.

How much do you think they actually need to fight this?

BP spent a billion on defense attorneys for Deepwater Horizon. There’s a zero percent chance it costs OpenAI anywhere close to that to fight this, but even if it did, a billion over the next few years wouldn’t even be a speed bump for them.

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