[jlokier]

That's less than a month's income for a few people on here. I recall a comment from an engineer at Nvidia a year or two ago saying $700k/year was about much they were paid, in response to someone else not believing those levels.

Get together 5 people in that position and it's less than a week's income for the group. That sounds doable as a hobby for those lucky people.

More realistically, it's within range for a grant, or use of someone else's hardware if they aren't using it, as the sibling comment from wongarsu said.

Also cloud vendors sometimes give out large batches of credits to startups and such as marketing incentive to get future customers.