You’re probably right that operating a data center doesn’t make sense. The initial things that pushed me in that direction were concerns about robustness of the availability of compute and the aim to cut into the supply of frontier chips labs have available to them rather than funge out other cloud compute users, but it’s likely way too much overhead.
I don’t worry about academics preferring to spend on other things, it’s specialization for efficient administration and a clear marketing narrative.
You’re probably right that operating a data center doesn’t make sense. The initial things that pushed me in that direction were concerns about robustness of the availability of compute and the aim to cut into the supply of frontier chips labs have available to them rather than funge out other cloud compute users, but it’s likely way too much overhead.
I don’t worry about academics preferring to spend on other things, it’s specialization for efficient administration and a clear marketing narrative.