There is very little about design and manufacture of ASICs that is cheap, unless you're selling them by the millions. Two previous employers evaporated because they couldn't sell enough units to recoup VC investment in building semi-custom ASICs. The kicker is that each employer was already selling a previous generation of their product using more plug-and-play, less custom, ASIC libraries. The customized next-gen products were intended to be more performant and power efficient, which they were, but they still sunk both companies.