Yeah but the ROI would be swift.
Just as swift as with 1 card. It all scales down (and up). Just depends on the appetite for risk. Is the ROI going to be complete before asics are out? is it the right coin to mine out of the dozens available and hoping to become big?
Is there a large enough buy market for that number of coins right now? I could sell my circa 10M today probably with a little effort and make a pretty decent return, could I sell 100/200 million? Probably impossible I would say. So they have to hope the coin succeeds, or need to find a way of dumping large volumes regularly. If that happens, it kills the coin in the early stages and they are left with a $130k rig thats mined a load of nothing.
Upsides and downsides to each strategy, but with that kind of hash power on a new coin, they are certainly taking a risk. WOuldnt surprise me if they stuck around until block halving, then mined something else like doge or another coin where they can make a steady investment return until another early coin comes along and they want to take a few days risk on that. Do I want to throw that kind of money (if they are gpu miners) at crypto as its not my day job, not really. Ive probably invested £2-3k in miners and electricity so far since December. If that goes down the pan, Im not bothered. If ID invested close to £100k and that went down the pan before ROI was achieved, I'd be a bit annoyed. So just depends on the appetite for risk, and if they are using GPU mining or whether they have got asics - then its a whole different ball game.