isn't floor price 0.10$ for last couple years?
It's almost never worth it to buy the cheapest chip unless you're making a million of something, but there are very good ones around $1-$2, and $5 is the upscale stuff.
Used in the cheapest devices you wouldn't even imagine to contain any software - eg. To control a touch sensitive on-off switch.
Iirc an important caveat was that it was a one-time programmable (OTP) part. So you buy a bunch of them, programming failure or firmware-under-test doesn't work? -> toss the part. Of course that isn't an issue for a $0.03 part. But it can be an issue in terms of a board you want it on. Either that means discarding (breakout) boards too, or for development you'd need some kind of adapter to put bare ICs in.
Such annoyances only make sense for high-volume, low cost applications. Which is eactly where parts like that go in.
it's fun reading all the reactions to it (like "it’s cheaper to program a Padauk PMS150C to be a logic-level converter than to just buy a logic level converter"), but the magic is gone more-or-less
but some ideas inside it and padauk's ecosystem as a whole seem impressive https://jaycarlson.net/2019/09/06/whats-up-with-these-3-cent...
edit: PMS152 seems to still be 0.03$ !