So am I…
He said it was their top of the line chip?
TI has only one dedicated 12S BMS chip. It could arguably be their top of the line but it is expensive, hard to use, and so new there isn’t even a full datasheet for it. It’s made for very large, high voltage, functional safety-compliant EV battery packs and requires a TON of proper software testing to get to that level of safety.
Using it for an esk8 pack would be a spectacular waste of time IMO and significantly raise its price. Getting the software certified to be compliant with the safety standards the chip was designed for would be a long and frightfully expensive process too. It’s worth it for the major EV manufacturers (the intended customers) but a high hurdle for smaller companies to get over.
Using this chip and not taking the time and money to create an “ASIL-D compliant” (very safe) pack would be silly.
Perhaps he’s using one of their other great BMS chips that is capable of handling a 12S pack as several work with a range of voltages that include 12S. They’re all just as good as the other, just different to handle different requirements for the pack. There’s no “top of the line”.