Interesting move considering that having design and manufacturing separate for reasons of incentive alignment and conflict of interest seems like the more successful strategy.

But I guess with RISC-V the market is still so small this might help them try and create a niche and induce some demand? Because otherwise I think they have it pretty rough since abandoning the leading edge race. This article from last year reported that clients are switching to smaller nodes faster than expected (which I assume is a trend that has continued) and China probably also has only accelerated their own capacities including for older nodes.