That's because of company policies. An SME owner will buy a server and have it in the rack the next day.
Of course creating a VM is still a teraform commit away (you're not using clickops in prod surely)
Of course creating a VM is still a teraform commit away (you're not using clickops in prod surely)
If you want a custom server, one or a thousand, it's at least a couple of weeks.
If you want a powerful GPU server, that's rack + power + cooling (and a significant lead time). A respectable GPU server means ~2KW of power dissipation and considerable heat.
If you want a datacenter of any size, now that's a year at least from breaking ground to power-on.