A quad core A17 is less than that at quantities under 1K pieces so why bother? When I looked at RISC-V I was hoping I would be able to get something similar to ARM SoCs but without the large number of peripherals I don't care about, like video decoders, jpeg decoders and what not. All I wanted was just a lot of ARM cores in an SoC, and if possible multiple I2S ports or at least a bus I can attach an FPGA to which can handle multiple I2S ports for me. Or perhaps an ARM SoC with onboard FPGA. That already exists but again too many useless peripherals and not enough CPU cores.
It’s a process to get there. To reach ecosystem scale people need to buy things. You can spin your own RISC-V chip but to get exactly what you want inexpensively you will need to get lots of others to buy it also.
IMHO it's a battle that can't be won anymore. NVIDIA did buy ARM, so if they screw it up then RISC-V has a chance. If not, then ARM will stay ahead unless some miracle happens.