I actually happen to be a semiconductor process engineer, so watch your claims here.

Foundries usually expect up-front payment from low volume, one-off customers like Friedcat. Assuming he's taped out his design and verified e-beam samples, he needs to open his checkbook for photomask sets, at the very least. He probably needs to pay for the chip batches also.

If he hasn't verified his e-beam samples, I suspect he needs to do so within the next couple of weeks to meet a December deployment deadline. If he's skipping e-beam testing, all the more reason he should be ordering the maska already.

Then there's the matter of assembly. Maybe he's got some buddies doing his assembly, but if so I'm a little surprised regarding his hubris about price advantage ("invincible"), since anyone could get the same price simply by being a businessman in China.

If he is doing it in-house, then he needs pick and place machines and reflow ovens and so on, because he needs to vastly increase production. That kind of equipment costs money.

So by trying to do better you would not be attempting to improve the business?