There are lots of choices but KZ is also OEM for many of these brands so all in all KZ still gets the monies even if these brands succeed. Also, many times CCA acts as a prototype for KZ which allows them to test and get real world feedback. Especially in early days, CCA models seem like prototype for ZS and AS series. And then, they simply began rebranding existing KZ models, so this is also a win-win for them considering they're building a brand and sub-brand where both have loyal fan bases. This is a common practice in Chinese electronics market e.g. Xiaomi (Redmi and Poco), BBK (Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus), Huawei (honor) all follow this practice. This allows them to try and experiment and target users with specific needs.
With such an easy model of making reasonable money, they would hardly look for a VC. I may be wrong here but, with the turmoil in the global economy coupled with CCP's strong policies, VC investment doesn't look like a realistic scenario for them.
For better or worse, TWS is the future of budget IEMs and KZ will 100% focus on that. If Qualcomm can't supply chips to them then they will turn to mediatek, realtek, Huawei or Samsung to give chips with BT capabilities. KZ's obsession to compete in Mid-Fi with budget products is somewhat more baffling to me. Ironically, most of their premium offerings are all BA sets. They should rather tune a pristine single DD or a hybrid and take that segment by storm. With their new XUN DD and learnings from other models, it is baffling why are they only launching IEMs with 30095 across all price points.
Fiio's reason of backing away from DAP market is also because of the development in the smartphone market. Today a sub $300 smartphone is very much capable to challenge a budget and mid-fi DAP. And, a consumer would rather spend $50-100 extra to get a powerful device instead of spending $100-150 on a DAP which is an additional accessory. Fiio's rep on one of their threads had commented that it is simply not feasible for them to compete with smartphones with a budget/mid-fi DAP by using older or weaker Snapdragon chips because in terms of quality, the inbuilt DAC of Snapdragon 6xx and above is actually more than enough to give high fidelity audio even without proper tuning. And many smartphones nowadays are partnering with Dolby, DTS et al to provide software solutions to optimally utilize the power of mobile chipset. Even Fiio did that with Viper till recently.