[akozak]

Figuring out the right amount of endowment is quite difficult, but you certainly need a LOT to get the outcomes like PARC. Are you running it off interest or burning down the pot? Also possible that we are simply in a different techno-economic and scientific moment than those researchers were (ie it was cheaper for them).

Also once you start framing it as investment or a biz decision in a big public company, the natural question is whether it's the best use of capital for Apple. It's not really about short vs longterm thinking either, it's about the deployment with the highest likelihood to return on any timeframe.

[UncleOxidant]

> Are you running it off interest or burning down the pot?

At some point in the future there should be some IP that could be licensed.

If you're starting out with, say, a $10B endowment there should be investments that could sustain a certain level of operation for quite a long time until that IP license income kicks in. Towards the end of the article they talk about the land that PARC is situated on and how that's now very valuable and will provide a source of income for the new SRI/PARC - so they seem to have lucked out with a real estate investment that they didn't realize at the time would payoff later.

[akozak]

Right that's the most likely strategy, but would also be Apple deciding to get in the licensing business (potentially with complications for their core biz) and is also something they could reasonably compare as an option against other ways of spending $10B.