alt Hacker NewsThe article you linked is not an example of this happening. Google open-sourced the chip design method, and uses it in production for TPU and other chips.
https://github.com/google-research/circuit_training
https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/how-alphachip-transfor...
It's an ongoing debacle with multiple people making extremely good arguments that Google overstated the results.
Yes, I know it's in TPUs and I said exactly that.
You simply can't take Google press at face value.