[yesfitz]

Vendor management is a risk that every business deals with to some capacity. What keeps Microsoft from charging more for Windows licenses? Linux, MacOS, even Chromebooks. A business who puts all their eggs in one vendor's basket without any exit strategy will either have to pay up, sell, or fold, but that kind of behavior from a vendor will have their other customers looking for a door.

Launching competitors? Maybe so, but this too has existing analogs pre-AI[1]. The fact that many start-ups today are created with the explicit goal of being acquired rather than growing organically or existing in perpetuity tells me that the only thing that may change is the cost of Sherlocking a startup will come down below the cost to acquire. But if the cost of creating a start-up and using a lawyer-bot to protect its intellectual property also come down, then the math isn't settled.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software)#Sherlocked...