Yes, they made a microcontroller to compete with the ESP32, but the ESP32 has orders of magnitude more market share and ecosystem. Not to diminish what they accomplished with the RP2040; it's an impressive chip.

But as for whether they're chasing performance, the RP2040 isn't their flagship product. The Pi 5 is.

And I've had a Pi 5, under heavy CPU (not peripheral) load, start throwing undervoltage warnings when using a 5V3A power supply from a Pi 4.