[segmondy]

Is the hardware what's stopping you? Let's suppose you really want to do this and it's exciting. Go buy the damn hardware yourself. They pay you great money, spend $5,000 buy/build a beefed up desktop with GPU and start training. Submit an expense report. If they deny, no problem, it's your hardware. At the end, you end up working/producing, having fun doing what you want to do, end up with valuable experience.

[ManlyBread]

I feel like spending 5k of your own money to provide value to someone who is not obligated to pay it back is risky at best and utterly stupid at worst. The fact that OP is paid well isn't really an excuse to suddenly start sponsoring his own employer.

[giantg2]

They might even fire you for running unapproved (unmonitored) hardware/software.

[el_dev_hell]

Alternatively, just ask for the hardware.