Possibly, but historically it high end semiconductors seem to turn into a winner takes all market more often than not. If that’s the case it’s probably preferable to have someone like ARM at the top than Intel or Nvidia.

It's winner take all in a competitive scenario, maybe. Winner is all is what RISC-V is trying to make happen.

nope, it is would be better if it was RISC-V.

Why (besides religious reasons)?

I don’t see how can high-end/competitive RISC-V cores could be fully open/free and without that how is it better than ARM.

>and without that how is it better than ARM.

Only ARM can license ARM cores to others.

Using RISC-V, any company who can design their own cores can also offer them for licensing.

There's already tens of companies offering hundreds of cores for licensing.

This is much better than ISA-enforced vendor lock-in, which is the situation with x86 and ARM.

There is nothing religious here.

arm and x86 are not royalty free ISAs, RISC-V is, then RISC-V is mechanically a better choice, until it does a good enough job.