100M is an exaggeration but still I think that's fine. Enable people doing research for the benefit of others access to their stuff, but if someone is going to get rich off of it why not take a cut?
I was assuming they meant in general, not just CRSPR. $100m would be an enormous amount of money for the Broad and they license all kinds of stuff regularly
Editas acquired Cpf1 exclusivity for just $16 million upfront [1], in the form of cash plus a note. Intellia and Crispr Therapeutics, as two examples, will be able to license Cas9 from Broad for their various programs for a lot closer to $20m upfront plus royalties (so far as their therapy paths don't directly collide with Editas).
Not all commercial entities are rich. If you were a scientist who found a novel application of CRISPR and wanted to develop a product and bring it to market, you'd be effectively screwed.
Just wait for the patent to expire. Or, don't wait, build out your product, and release it the second the patent expires. If it's a good enough idea, you'll be able to find investors willing to bridge the time gap.
Editas and Broad only control the US market. It's extremely unlikely Broad will acquire such a strong position in Europe or Asia (in fact it's practically guaranteed they will not).
If you had such a stellar therapy, and you couldn't get it past Editas, you'd go to Europe and partner with any number of a dozen other entities there that would be guaranteed to be interested (such as Novartis, which owns part of NTLA).
In short, if you want to sell a product, Editas gets right of first refusal to license from Broad, and only if they refuse would the startup be able to proceed to license. If you just want to use CRISPR for in house research, you have to license it; no idea if the fees are prohibitive.
If you're a commercial entity, it's 100M.