I expect that they would stick with it, assuming they still had enough funding.
The funding is the key—assuming they can keep their major donor or acquire sufficient elsewhere losing Eliezer is hardly a dealbreaker. It’s just a HR problem and Luke would solve it. It may take the better part of a decade to get someone trained to Eliezer’s level of expertise but it’s something that could be done concurrently with everything else (for example, concurrently with all the other Eliezer-replacements that were in training at the same time.)
The funding is the key—assuming they can keep their major donor or acquire sufficient elsewhere losing Eliezer is hardly a dealbreaker. It’s just a HR problem and Luke would solve it. It may take the better part of a decade to get someone trained to Eliezer’s level of expertise but it’s something that could be done concurrently with everything else (for example, concurrently with all the other Eliezer-replacements that were in training at the same time.)