OpenLiteSpeed https://openlitespeed.org/

Host-specific guides (but no hetzner):

https://docs.litespeedtech.com/cloud/images/wordpress/

Very easy, robust, fast.

You can def roll your own sever and solution, but WordPress needs a lot of help. As other commentors said, you need to bypass both the database and PHP as much as possible, via caching.

While a simple redis or valkey store solves that, you’re relying on some integration thru the php layer to make it happen, usually some plugin.

Serving files or otherwise caching directly thru the webserver is gonna make it faaaaast.

Then there’s the question of database writes. Who is writing to your database, where, and how often?

Edit: I see you have editors updating content 1-2x per hour. They should rewrite caches hot on each update so they’re the only ones paying the db latency cost.

Did Tesla stock go up on this glorious news?

I’m not hearing where you disagree. You want me to add more nuance? For what, exactly? To absolve the world’s richest man for his CSAM machine?

Grok has no agency. Elon played a heavy role in the design of the tool, promotes and profits off its use, and has failed to stop users from producing this material with what can only be considered as a feature of his software