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It seems likely that facing "hundreds of billions of dollars in potential damages liability at trial in four months" pushed the company to settle—particularly since industry advocates noted that one risk of Alsup certifying such a large class action is that it paved the way for any AI company to simply fold when facing such substantial damages, regardless of the merits of their case. Wired estimated that damages could have gone even higher, with Anthropic potentially risking "more than $1 trillion in damages."

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