For comparison: The ActivityPub fediverse doesn't need VC because it's funded by users of each of thousands of servers. It's self-sustaining.
The Q1 timeline for public federation seems plausible.
Keeping in mind it's further complicated by BGSes and the likely multiple base cost to run vs an average PDS. Someone has to run those to maintain the key benefit over AP unless they came up with an accessible to normal people way for people to self-manage keys and data since the last time I looked into it.
mastodon.social is funded on Patreon where it makes 22,750 €/month. That's what, about 9 cents per active user on mastodon.social? And the Patreon isn't only for mastodon.social, but also for iOS/Android apps, mastodon.online (18K active users), and the Mastodon project itself.
Even limited to that, it's a nonprofit. You can go and check their financials if you want. Here's 2022 (PDF): https://joinmastodon.org/reports/Mastodon%20Annual%20Report%...
2023 is likely on the way.
According to Graphtreon, paid members for the Mastodon Patreon are down 23% in a year and earnings by about 28% (https://graphtreon.com/creator/mastodon). mstdn.social is also down by about 16% / 22% in the last year (https://graphtreon.com/creator/mstdn). Mastodon.world seems to be doing better since all of their numbers are up compared to a year ago, although on a six-month window they are dropping 19% / 25% (https://graphtreon.com/creator/mastodonworld).
Running a Personal Data Service (PDS) on the ATProto network should be much more doable for hobbyists. The relay and app view servers handle search, discovery, and caching to alleviate traffic. So a typical PDS should not see too much traffic. Now just waiting for the Bluesky ATProto network to actually go federated, but I don't think we are too far off from that happening as they've already federated their own PDS into multiple PDSs.