As noted elsewhere, that's not how overhead works, and vanishingly few grants are in-kind.

Also, expressly, large capital expenditures like equipment are exempt from indirect costs at most universities.

HN's notion of how universities work is probably about as accurate as my notions of how VC funding works.

In-kind grants are fairly uncommon and generally aren't a "substitute" for cash: salaries, even being what they are, are a fairly major expense for most labs.

In my experience, in-kind grants mostly occur when the "giver" has/gets the "gift" cheaply. For example, NVIDIA gave out tons of graphics cards, but they certainly don't pay full retail for their own product. This lets them give you a grant "worth" $5k, but costs them substantially less. Ditto pharma companies, which may not even sell the thing given.

It seems clever to give the funder a shopping list, and then get an "in-kind" grant for exactly what you want. However, many places will waive/reduce indirect costs on equipment (which, per the NIH is $5000 and lasts for >1 year).