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.)
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.
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.
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.)