Why would Apple settle? They probably want the same outcomes of the Waymo v Uber trial that forced Uber out of the market. Apple's accusations imply that every part of OpenAI's hardware effort has been tainted with Apple's trade secrets and is therefore illegitimate. They also have more money than God so they can keep the suit going as long as they want.

This is an interesting point here. Due to having infinite money already, that's a possible dynamic we might see. OAI admits "Yup, obviously you got us. Let's write a check." And Apple might just respond "Nah, we are obviously going to win at trial, the legal fees don't bother us a bit, and honestly we don't really need the money, we'd rather destroy you as heavily as possible, for some combination of making an example out of all the criminals involved, plus there's a tiny chance you could threaten us someday considering you hired 'our boy' Jony Ive to build hardware."

They will just settle if a settlement gets them what they want for less than fighting this to legal completion would cost them (on a risk-adjusted basis).

Uber was not forced to leave the self driving car market by Waymo's litigation. The litigation ended in February 2018 and Uber left the market in December 2020.