You are talking about the big leagues and you expect you have both skill and reputation gaps to make up. There are lots of sports and entertainment metaphors for this, and lots of- very rare, yes- success cases. In areas like this the world is enough of a meritocracy that if one has talent, and develops skill, then there are plenty of platforms by which one can be noticed.

You need to do work that you can do. Deep and low level. A single gpu is fine. Lots of projects and repos out there, esp for inference.

It is difficult in terms of motivation to apply low level focus to problems your social brain thinks are irrelevant. You have to learn how to ignore the social brain and listen only to the technical curiosity brain. Keep a journal. Document your findings. Find the motivation train every researcher has inside.

And look if you wind up not having the talent or time, then this is just a hobby. And that is ok.