Many institutions don't.
Look at China. A couple of years ago people thought people in China weren't doing good AI research, but the thing is, there's good AI research from basically everywhere-- even South America. You can't assume that institutions can spend >$250k on computational resources.
Many can, but many can't.
There are plenty of research institutions that can easily spend >$250k on computational resources. Many routinely spend multiples of that volume.
They'll be fine.