The CIA is the hidden funder that kept NeXT (and the iPhone's OS) alive
NeXT was bleeding cash and its university sales flopped, until the CIA's classified "Program B" showed up in 1986 with custom orders fit for spy-satellite image analysis. The classified revenue helped keep Jobs' company afloat long enough for Apple to buy it back. That's why the code that would become the foundations of macOS and iOS was born, partly on the intelligence community's dime.