Recently I was invited to invest in a small mining "farm" partially funded with non refundable money. Basically, we're going to have a budget of 180k EUR ( about ~215k USD ). If we do get that part of the external funding, it comes with a string - the mining farm has to be profitable at least 1.5 years ( real profit, not $1 / day ). Our main target is etherum ( read the P.S. why ) but we were not able to understand what is going to happen after the Byzantium fork. We know that the fork coming next days is going to increase the difficulty but Byzantium, ~October, is going to decrease it back 1 block every 15s. We do know that there is a time bomb implemented ( due to make mining impossible in late 2018? ) but we don't really understand how mining will be until it sets in. We weren't able to find any predictions.

Considering the above, do you guys think GPU is still a good investment for Etherum ( or any other coin ? ). I am afraid of not hopping in too late and making a mistake.

P.S.: Local regulations make it impossible to import equipment such as Antminer, so, we have to use well known branded equipment, basically do GPU mining.

Edit: I feel I left an important part unmentioned. The non-refundable funding is something I get from the government to invest to create jobs. I invest around 30-40k and they give me the rest (that's why I can't buy the coins and definitely I can't buy antminers because all equipment has be bought from a local shop to increase their business as well ). The catch is I have to create a couple of jobs in my current business, they don't really have to be involved in the small data center, but I have to keep these jobs for 3 years otherwise I will have to return all the money the government gave me to invest. Most likely I will get the money sometime in February next year. So, in the end, the question is: do you think that running rigs ( worth of 180k but paid 30-40k for them ) for one year ( or one year and a half to be on the safe side ) would be profitable? For some,  the answer would be definitely yes but I am a bit scared of what might happen with etherum in the next year or if monero / pascal would still be mineable to make profit.