You can get much more modern hardware with firmware. This was mostly an expirement to see how good LLM are at reverse engineering. Given that it went well I think making fully free (without Intel) x86-side firmware is possible.

i don't think it's really "far behind", it just can't run on hardwares that require manufacturer keys (e.g. intel bootguard)

afaik all modern x86 chromebooks ship with coreboot based firmware