>They don't have anything that compete in core count, but if you look at the 9980/10980 series with 18 cores, its very competitive on a price basis per core with the 24/32/64 core threadrippers.

That's not a fair comparison, considering that price per core usually goes up the more cores there are. Also, if you check pcpartpicker you'll see all the i9s with greater than 12 cores are either sold out, or well above their MRSP.