[bilbo0s]

If your instance is hosted by Microsoft, I doubt Apple would do the same.

My suspicion is that a company like Apple would want it on-prem, or not at all. A hosted instance with a pinky promise not to peek is not attractive to a lot of large businesses out there.

Your material point may still be valid. Apple could buy it, assuming MS was willing to give Apple a full copy and let them run it internally. (This would require divulging the details of its model to Apple. So I have no clue whether either of them are interested in dealing on such a basis? It would seem like a deal to me if MS could get the right price from Apple? But people a lot smarter than me make that call.)

[insane_dreamer]

MS could certainly make a version that runs on-prem (while still restricting inspection of the model), if it wanted to. Whether it does or not, remains to be seen.

[bilbo0s]

Not sure how you would do that? As soon as you load the card, all the weights are visible. You need a bit more than that, but not much, to reverse engineer the whole thing.

If I had to bet, they won't allow non hosted instances of a model until they are well on their way to completing the next model. That's just my gut feeling. But again, smarter people make those calls.