Imagination Technologies sold off MIPS in 2017 [1] - while RISC-V might have been a thing back then, it was certainly nowhere as known as it is today, and well before any decision to focus on RISC-V.

Interesting in that Imagination have since announced RISC-V cores [2], but that's unrelated to any of the MIPS tech, and none of the MIPS engineers worked on it as the project started well after the sale.

[1] https://www.imaginationtech.com/news/completion-of-sale-of-m...

[2] https://www.imaginationtech.com/news/imagination-launches-ri...