Comment by zgao

There is no real way to prevent this, but there are ways to increase the cost of doing so. For example, one level of obfuscation is, OAI could internally run synthesis and adopt a “netlist-in” model in which Broadcom gets a netlist - a description of a huge amount of gates and wires and how they connect - instead of the plain Verilog (or other language). It is possible to reverse engineer the netlist, but it’s a certain level of indirection and effort.

A big part of the semiconductor industry also operates on a reputation basis. Broadcom (like TSMC) is a neutral party as a design house, but if they did something like this, it might ruin that reputation.