I'm curious where the data is to support the argument.
I am struggling to see the adoption appetite outside of niche applications where licensing costs of existing architectures are a key barrier.
It's often seen displacing things like 8051, ARM Cortex-M0, ARC/ARCompact, Xtensa and oddball fully custom cores.
It also starts to show up in low end Linux SoCs - often, again, purpose-specific ones, like SoCs for IP cameras or other single purpose consumer electronics like robot vacuums and drones.
None of those are sexy "high end" applications, like laptops or smartphones, but the adoption is real.
An apt comparison would be C vs Rust. Yes, Rust may be growing in market share, but C still dominates.
Just a nit-pick: risc-v isn't limited to the ESP32-C line. All of their chips are risc-v except the OG/S/S2/S3. A few years ago they've stated that the S3 would be the last xtensa chip and they seem to have held to that, the -E, -H, and -P lines released since are all risc-v.
Tenstorrent is shipping RISC-V chips made on Samsung 3nm node: https://tenstorrent.com/newsroom/tenstorrent-sets-new-perfor...
Note that Jim Keller (heavyweight in the world of CPU architecture) is their CEO.
Qualcomm recently acquired a RISC-V startup. https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2025/12/qualcomm-acqu...
Plus they're eating ARM for low-end devices (IoT).
RISC-V is going to become the Linux of chips, for the same reasons Linux became big. It might honestly come even faster as Microsoft isn't tethered to any chipmaker these days.