The ESP32 (and other ESP chips) are somewhat common in smart home/IoT gear, particularly for devices that are dependent on a cloud service to function. There's a growing trend in the smart home community of re-flashing cloud-dependent ESP32 based hardware with ESPHome, which makes the device fully local controlled, eliminating the risk of the cloud service being discontinued/enshitified.

It's not a particularly common thing yet, but smart home enthusiasts are becoming increasingly concerned about the expense and effort required to replace cloud-dependent hardware because the manufacturer decided the cloud service isn't worth maintaining anymore.