At my last industry job my department (ca. 2016) had a Excel sheet so big and complicated the people that used it got permission for a RAM upgrade and install of 64-bit Windows just so it would run at an acceptable speed.

That company used to have Oracle. Then, to save money, they dropped most their Oracle licenses and forced DBAs to switch to Access for anything that wasn’t company-wide. Eventually they canned the DBAs, and since no one could maintain the Access applications, most of the company went to Excel.