Absolutely! There's lots of hardware around, but being able to turn an Arduino project into an emergency beacon or IP link has some benefits too, and $20 is likely cheaper than what's been around. At $20 these are commodity prices, which I don't think we've had for high quality general purpose computing + wireless platforms.
It's always good to see cheaper hardware - our early 'proof of concept' hardware were based on an 'Arduino FIO' + 'XBee Pro' which came out to ~$60. Then quickly migrated to a TI MSP430 + CC2500(CC1100) which slashed the price to <$20 all told. We're now on the ARM M3/M4 SoC bandwagon as well. So I understand that angle.
I'm sorta curious as to what you plan on using the $80k for. Are you going to farm out PCB fabrication to OSHpark/China/whatever - or get a pick and place machine, CNC mill, and try to do everything inhouse?
We have a lot of resources for manufacturing in China. I've personally ordered a few thousand assembled boards from Gold Phoenix through the course of my old job, which was... fun.
We've got a lot of connections in Silicon Valley to tap too for finding hardware partners. I'm not particularly interested in becoming a fab house, unless it's cheaper (including headaches).
