Asahi could be a viable alternative, however, with this amount of funding, small manpower pool pace of development is doomed to be too slow.

There's groundwork that's already been done, as mentioned in the article, which brings some dividends, but, ultimately, there is a new mac every year that comes with a new chip, a plethora of microcontrollers and gpu changes, impossible to keep up with, that is why asahi team is focused more on m1 and m2 models. Even so, to this day both of them have issues with idle power management and alt-dp implementation, preventing many to switch, by the time they will have been ironed out the value of machines would be significantly diminished.

It is a miracle how much so few can do, but in the end, despite ubiquitous media coverage it looks like team's enthusiasm and passion have dwindled to the point that even m1 air will never be ready.

If they can set a single machine as target every few years and make it work, that would be a lot better than having no alternative.

M1 support is pretty usable nowadays, and I would imagine at least a fraction of the work translates to future devices... It's not sunshine and rainbows, but it isn't a project doomed to fail either.