This advice is generally very sound but misses the mark slightly. > underpriced by a factor of 2X to 10X. The OP never asked about price, so this is pure spec

This advice is generally very sound but misses the mark slightly. > underpriced by a factor of 2X to 10X. The OP never asked about price, so this is pure speculation. Why is the conclusion that this is a sales objection? > It's going to cost you $20k and some legal wrangling regarding non-disclosure and non-competes It sounds like they haven't even gotten through procurement yet, which means they can't even suggest charging $20k for NDA's etc. > Is this just somebody who wanted to sound smart in a meeting? This absolutely does happen, but it doesn't happen when the company is discussing POC plans. > We know that they have lots of resources and are building up internal data science team. And yet it was pointed out to me that their goal might not necessarily be to outright steal our IP, but rather to cover their bases. But we are still worried they might be "inspired" by the parts they see and get their internal teams to replicate across other sites or use cases. And we don't have the resources to litigate, nor any way of knowing they do this. > Is this a business unit head sniffing for new things to build? These are both hypotheses based on observations, but they are not conclusions to the situation. The OP's company needs someone who has experience in this realm (a "grey haired enterprise software sales guy") and help them come to a conclusion before they make decisions to move this forward. There's way too many variables and open questions to offer any real sound advice. TL;DR - for situations this complex and high stakes, relying on a HN comments will not bode well. For the record since someone asked in another comment, I have navigated a procurement process with a financial services company with $1T in AUM, working on a $50M/year software project, as an example of experience.