Asic economics dictate that the cost of making the masks needed for prodution is hundreds of thousands. Once you have the masks, the cost of making chips is ~$1

Asic economics dictate that the cost of making the masks needed for prodution is hundreds of thousands. Once you have the masks, the cost of making chips is ~$10k per wafer. Depending on the size of their chips (I don't know), you can build high tens to hundreds of chips per wafer. They gathered the money for masks by selling the first batch. Now they own the masks, and they can make more of them relatively cheaply. I suspect that they are building their very own mining pool as we speak.