Look at companies like Cyrix for example. They made some good 86x processors in the 90s but were also constantly involved in legal battles. AMD was literally in

Look at companies like Cyrix for example. They made some good 86x processors in the 90s but were also constantly involved in legal battles. AMD was literally in an ongoing legal battle for 20 years straight. In the 90s you had other companies that could have built x86 chips, if they would have been allowed two. Digital Alpha was the bases for the AMD chips that kicked Intel so hard that they resorted paying their supplier to not adopt it. Digital could have done a x86 but they would have been in a lawsuit with intel. Intel also didn't really have an advantage on the node for most of that period.