No he couldn't, unless you think ActM will be using different chips for their mine than what they will ship to customers.
Ken hasn't had the chips back yet. End of story.
You don't really know what he has and what he doesn't, whether he got an initial batch of sample chips or not. In early November, he stated he was going to be adding about 3 TH or more over the following weeks. That could have been from sample chips.
So, do you think Ken is lying about waiting for chips and has actually been mining since November and is keeping the bitcoin for himself?
He may be waiting for the mainline batch of chips with which to fulfill the orders made by customers who are not ActM, which he could have potentially had modified for whatever reason - intellihash or whatever. I'm not saying he is lying, just that he isn't giving all the details. He may also not be mining for himself but just trying to keep a lid on the fact that he has things up and running to some extent. If it was me, and I was going to try to gain a huge percentage of the network, I wouldn't want anyone else to know in advance but only after I had to reveal it. The later others knew, the better. Or Ken could have been a customer to VMC, purchasing the first batch of units from there. I don't know. But this recent hashing power boost has come within the last week alone - i.e., it wasn't present in Nov. or prior to Dec. 20-something. It started out hashing at around 9 TH.
I can say "Hey, the chips are going to be late." That doesn't mean that I don't already have chips, it could just mean that a certain batch of chips are going to be late, or a whole host of different things. If your wife asks, "Did you take the trash out?" You may say you did, but not in the same way that she thought. Maybe you just took it out of the house and piled it under the deck cause you didn't get it out in time for collection, but technically speaking, you "took it out" (i.e., carried it outside). But she is asking whether you took it out to the curb in time for collection.
I'm just speculating... I find it strange that someone is adding hashing power in increments perfectly divisible by 25 TH every couple days. Yeah, it could be 150 KNC miners or HashFast or CoinTerra miners, that just coincidentally are being added to the network in increments that suggest ActM Platinum miner's 24.5 TH spec.