As you well know, Robert, I am going with you in this story.

There is a certain probability for such a cooperation, a split of this "PET"-part and these 40 engineers at apple working on this issue. Everyone of us has to "calculate" this probability for himself. It never will be 0 nor 1.

But it is in the very nature of such a project - especially with the most secetive company... We will not know anything until it is done and public. There hardly will be any leaks until then. So it is moot to continue this discussion until there are any evidences. 
This is just opening your flanks for attacks.

Direct questions at the AGM (Do you have any NDA with company A?) wouldn't have been answered at all. Aves question (many thanks!!!) was quite clear - and the answer by SV was - as expected. They will not tell us more, also if there would not be any collaboration. 

More interesting at this point would be for me: What measurements and actions would take a company like Apple to keep things secret? One good method would be to discredit people like you. LOL.