>AFAICT, this hasn't happened for any "cloud" compute company that has been in business for -say- at least five years.

Most cloud software has had moats. AI does not. And AI is eating software, which means those historical margins are going away for a lot of cloud software,too. That's what the SAAS-pocalypse is about.

>Assuming that you're not doing anything that needs exotic system administrators

Remember, these are also going to be AI.

>Assuming I haven't fucked up my math, [2][3] the cost of the hardware here is more than three times the cost of power.

This is a fair point, but it just means the COGS is higher, not that the margin is any better. I stand by the prediction that AI margins will be very slim.