If an insane instruction set gives us higher performance and makes CPU and compiler design more complex, this might be an acceptable trade-off.
Its simply about the amount of investment. x86 had 50 years of gigantic amounts of sustained investment. Intel outsold all the RISC vendors combined by like 100 to 1 because they owned the PC business.
When Apple started seriously investing in ARM. They were able to match of beat x86 laptops.
The same will be true for RISC-V.