China is moving to RISC-V to remove its dependency on amd64 and arm64, and thus to US sanctions since Intel/AMD and ARM are subject to US law.
Intel wants to keep the ability to serve the Chinese market, that means in the long terms having RISC-V offerings, hence the investment in SiFive.
Unlike Ottelini, Gelsinger is not a bean-counter who sold off StrongARM/XScale to Marvell and thus made Intel irrelevant to the ARM market, and by extension to mobile computing.
Intel wants to keep the ability to serve the Chinese market, that means in the long terms having RISC-V offerings, hence the investment in SiFive.
Unlike Ottelini, Gelsinger is not a bean-counter who sold off StrongARM/XScale to Marvell and thus made Intel irrelevant to the ARM market, and by extension to mobile computing.