In many places engineers complain about the high NRE costs.Do you as someone from the inside see a solution, in the future, leading for a startup to be able to design with the newest node ?
Even if the EDA companies were to provide all of the tools for free, the startups would be facing the high costs from the foundries.
But to tell you the truth, there is not much incentive to design in the newest node if you don't have money to spend. The technology not only is expensive but it is also unstable.
Or the other option is to build multi for chips like marvel with their Lego concept offered, all at advanced nodes, but most of the dies after reused from previous designs.