Who was this "litigation funder".^1
Perhap the funder wanted to settle, even though hiQ could have prevailed at trial on the CFAA claims. Arguably, hiQ's goal was not to establish new CFAA precedent, it was to compete with LinkedIn. It wanted a Court to order LinkedIn to stop blocking its access to public data.
This took too long. hiQ ran out of money. (Or its funding source(s) ran out of patience.)
If hiQ had the funding to go the distance, then it's impossible to predict what would have happened.
It's sad that the top comment in this thread believes LinkedIn sued hiQ to stop it from scraping. That's not what happened. hiQ's "business" was going to fail because LinkedIn was effectively blocking its access, even when hiQ was using proxies and mechanical turks. hiQ filed for a declaratory judgment against LinkedIn: hiQ sued LinkedIn.
Here is the Order for anyone who cares to read it.
https://ia600100.us.archive.org/29/items/gov.uscourts.cand.3...
1. According to the Order, the funder is identified in some correspondence filed as an exhibit. It is not clear from the Order whether names in the correspondence were redacted, i.e., it's not clear whether it's public or private information. I'm assuming the former.