Hyperscalers do their own boards, chassis, BMCs, racks, etc., and can do their firmware (or modifications to it) though. Several are even getting into their own CPU designs. They don't want any boutique designs controlled by other companies there. And they don't want to pay premiums for it. They certainly don't want to run a proprietary hypervisor / host OS stack on it.
You're assuming hyperscalars would be our target buyer. That's not the case; in fact, it's almost backwards. Hyperscalars build these things for themselves, but do not sell them to others. There are other organizations that could take advantage of this technology, but literally cannot buy it. That's where Oxide fits in.
They may have been. Regardless, that’s not the case. No harm no foul either way! I’d absolutely agree with you that trying to sell to them wouldn’t make sense.