I don't think he was suggesting that developing a general process cpu that is competitive with Intel's offering costs only 10k. He said that getting your ASIC design, i.e. application-specific integrated circuit, etched into silicon is cheaper than is used to be and that's true. I know guys who implemented things like novel power converters on an IC as their masters projects, using only the budget of, well, master projects.
The money is a huge barrier to entry for hobbyist types, but if we're talking about commercial stuff, it'll probably cost you a lot more to pay for the engineers who are competent enough to implement something that will actually work than it will to do the fabrication.
The money is a huge barrier to entry for hobbyist types, but if we're talking about commercial stuff, it'll probably cost you a lot more to pay for the engineers who are competent enough to implement something that will actually work than it will to do the fabrication.