I know you asked about VMs, but fwiw there are GPU-capable containers now: https://docs.nvidia.com/datacenter/cloud-native/container-toolkit/latest/install-guide.html
Used one of these and the setup is as easy as it sounds. It can run Houdini, Stable Diffusion.
You're right, this ageism is stupid. Common lisp is probably its contemporary, yet is great. Cobol does seem like a nightmare though.