Acquisition of new hardware or hw partners as the case may be needs to be driven by metrics. In the case of IC some of the KPIs are: level of decentralization, ability to scale, and usage.
I suggest you read this: Node Provider Inflation Spiral - #175 by Accumulating.icp
What this tells me is that
a) there is a lot more nodes waiting to get online (600+ it seems?)
b) we are only able to use 1/100 of a node’s potential
c) we have sub 1% cycle usage of actual paying customer to node rewards
These are god awful statistics. We need a pause to save this network before it collapses on itself from all this inefficiency.
The “if we build it they will come” model is super risky and that seems to be the path the IC is on. We have not proven that there is yet sufficient demand coming soon for the IC, sometimes these transitions can take years longer than anticipated.