I can actually imagine a large data center using their spare, unused capacity for services like Storj.
Consider, let say, Hetzner. They probably have tens of thousands of customers, so likely manage a similar number of IP addresses. They can probably chip off one address out of every /24 block they have access to, because most customers only manage single IPs or maybe some /28, /27 subblocks. They have plenty of storage that is waiting for customers… while unused, why not use for Storj? And they can do it on scale, meaning a single person automating hundreds of nodes.
Now the work involved wouldn’t probably pay off the engineer tasked with setting up the nodes, Tardigrade’s too small for that yet. But I wouldn’t be surprised that if Tardigrade manages to take off, most of storage will be provided by places like that.