Most DL researchers don't care about CUDA, they use higher level frameworks (Tensorflow, Pytorch, Caffe, etc). The frameworks can be extended to support other b

Most DL researchers don't care about CUDA, they use higher level frameworks (Tensorflow, Pytorch, Caffe, etc). The frameworks can be extended to support other backends (e.g. OpenCL). If someone builds their own hardware, provides integrated support for that hardware in Tensorflow, and demonstrates speed advantages, people will use it.