In the past when I was in academia, I saw a really interesting model: you have a faculty position at a university or a national lab. But you also set up an "In

In the past when I was in academia, I saw a really interesting model: you have a faculty position at a university or a national lab. But you also set up an "Institute" which is independent from the U or lab. Instead it's an LLC owned by the faculty. The institute applies for grants ("wearing your institute hat") and the resulting grants are not subject to the university or lab overhead. Instead, that overhead goes to fund the admin structure for the institute, which can be far more minimal than a typical research institute. With an approach like this you can get $2-5M/year in funding, hire 1-2 really good employees, and use the rest of the money to pay for cloud infra (or on-prem or other infra if that's your preference). And of course, any ideas you have, you spin off into startups that you have equity in.