Perhaps you are thinking that the FPGA is a product? It's not; it's an RTL validator. Moving chip RTL from FPGA to product silicon is a well understood step tha

Perhaps you are thinking that the FPGA is a product? It's not; it's an RTL validator. Moving chip RTL from FPGA to product silicon is a well understood step that is almost routine in the industry. Time was you would do initial RTL development work in silicon, but modern FPGAs are big enough to hold a whole CPU core. Today you wouldn't develop directly on the silicon without an FPGA step, even if you own a fab; it's just too expensive to debug.