Is this going to be like a $20,000 chip, for the 288 core version?

The specs are ridiculous. This thing is a beast.

These are E-Cores, single vCPU / Thread per core. In terms of pref per socket, 192-core EPYC 9965 is now only going for $10K. I expect this to be about $10K as well. Although typically Intel will mark the price up and do steep discount with preferred customers.

We will also have to see how Intel 18A perform as well. E Core typically optimise for sub 1W range and scale up to 2W. That is 600W+ including IO. In the next 5 years most web scaling issue will be a thing of the past. You can get a dual socket of these in a single 1U server.