Although they aren't shutting down, I was thinking that even if they did, Apple can just wait for the dust to settle and buy one of the existing/growing players once the technology is proven out (they definitely have the cash to do it).

Spending a lot of money and trying to catch up to Waymo/Zoox/Cruise etc is also kinda hard, even for Apple, because of all of the pieces of the stack they need to work on and access to a very competitive/small talent pool.