Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like they changed a lot and got a hugely different niche. > Instead of adapting an existing microcontroller architecture to plastic, Kumar’s team started from scratch to create a design called Flexicore. “Yield goes down very quickly as you increase gate count,” says Kumar. Knowing that, they came up with a design meant to minimize the number of gates needed. Using 4-bit and 8-bit logic instead of 16-bit or…
It does raise the question... Why didn't they just use an Intel 4004... The patents have long expired and plenty of other companies make very old intel clones to out in modern products (eg. Most optical mice use a 50 year old intel to control a custom DSP to do image processing to figure out which way you're moving the mouse)
And the ubiquitous 8051s don't typically use Intel masks AFAIK for the same reasons. You really want to optimize for whatever process node currently makes sense.