The pulp platform has taped out a RISC-V based microcontroller, but I don't think they have plans to sell/really distribute any asics unfortunately.
Yeah, that is the problem with niche CPU arches; if mass quantities aren't available to buy (either lone chips or in consumer products), people aren't going to use it much. Not everyone can afford to have their own fab :)
You can always start playing around with PULPino on a FPGA :)
Pretty much everyone is looking at eventual ASIC fabrication. It just takes a lot of money to do that, so people are validating ideas first on FPGAs.
Everyone is looking at ASIC fabrication, it's distribution that we're concerned about.