For everyone else,
The reason is because arxiv is growing significantly leading to 297,000 deficit in operating costs for 2025 alone. Corenell has helped with donation a long with other organizations that pay membership fees.
As a result, donors + leaders of arxiv think it's best to spin off to increase funding.
Now they're going to have a deficit of 600,000 in operating costs.
What is unclear why they need stuff of 27 and 6.7 million to operate essentially static hosting website in 2026.