Ideally then a merger would be most formidable if it was greater than the sum of its parts.

Things are rarely ideal and it can also be quite formidable when it's only equal to the sum of its parts.

Or even "less-than-equal" if it's really affordable, depending on the combined resources, or even one-sided resources.

None of this really means any "merging" of tasks or facilities, or combining business structures, etc.

There's such a huge amount of options and possibilities just from different approaches and levels of equity and cash consideration.

A merger can completely engulf the smaller company, with a logical transition plan to deprecate its separate identity (sometimes for better or worse) and assimilating it into part of an established structured monolith. Or even creating a new monolith altogether in combination. OTOH it can be done so there are virtually no changes to either org up and down almost their entire separate structures, with only a handful of operators at the top adjusting to equally influential changes which are purely in financial elements alone.

This is not completely unlike Ive getting paid in advance to work his magic. Except it looks like he was up to new tricks starting a couple years ago, with sama's encouragement. Or is that more like deferred compensation? If it's going to be insanely great there's probably so much work to do, there wouldn't even be time to spend an extra billion dollars or so, plus that's a lot of money so it would be best to have a better idea if it's really worth spending before you go whole hog too.

A couple years ago it was probably a good bet that something big could come out of a collaboration. And it could really be worth money someday. And that idea is now worth more than it was back then. And as good fortune would have it, sama was on a trajectory to be better able to afford it now for quite a high price compared to what it was worth then, and he couldn't have justified it yet back then anyway. I would think Ive has made progress in the last couple years (without spending exorbitant amounts) that impressed sama more than ever too. Imagine what he could do if he had exorbitant amounts :) I guess we'll find out.

Looks like Ive will have quite a bit of resources to finalize designs and ramp up, plus billions more in equity to fall back on if that's not enough. This may just it be what it takes to launch a mass-adoption physical product without having undue pressure to prematurely issue something with any type of shoddiness.