This unfairly trivialises the work System76 in particular does on its products.
Hardware engineers working for System76 collaborate with Clevo on designing and producing laptops. Systems developers then write any code that the product needs, including contributing drivers to Linux. Application developers then get things like Pop and Cosmic working on the new product.
The Linux expertise in-house of System76 could surely crush the current Framework team if they competed head-to-head in that specific domain. What @Peter_Wren posted earlier is accurate.