> 400K would go -fast- if they stuck to a traditional colo setup.

I don’t know where you’re pricing coloration, but I could host a single server indefinitely from the interest alone on $400K at the (very nice) data centers I’ve used.

Collocation is not that expensive. I’m not understanding how you think $400K would disappear “fast” unless you think it’s thousands of dollars per month?

I, personally, have a cabinet in a colo. With $400k, I can host it at that datacentre with the income from risk-free return never exercising the capital with 10 GigE, 3 kW of power. If I can do it, they can do it.

Modern computers are super efficient. A 9755 has 128 cores and you can get it for cheap. If you've been doing this for a while you'd have gotten the RAM for cheap too.

If I, a normie, can have terabytes of RAM and hundreds of cores in a colo, I'm pretty sure they can unless they have some specific requests.

And dude, I'm in the Bay Area. Think about that. I'm in one of the highest cost localities and I can do this. I bet there are Colorado or Washington DCs that are even cheaper.

400k would last me 13 years for a rack, power and 10Gbit/s bandwidth at my colo place (Switzerland, traditionally high prices)

For reference, in the US at least, there was/is a company called Joes Data Center in KC who would colo a 1U for $30 or $40 a month. I'd used them for years before not needing it anymore, so not some fly by night company(despite the name).

At that rate, that would buy you nearly 1000 years of hosting.

For a server? The going rate for a 1/4 cabinet is $300-500/month.

If 100 years is fast, yes. You can get pretty sweet colo for 4k per year. I know cheaper places too.

A full rack, 10 gigabits bandwidth and 1920W of power is available for as little as $800/month: https://1530swift.com/colocation.php

Of course you have to buy the switches and servers…