>FreeBSD does not excel on the server side. I don't know any companies that even use it and I spent the last decade consulting with hundreds of companies.

Examples come to mind: Whatsapp and Hotmail used to use it before being acquired by companies with their own tech stacks. Netflix's streaming service is based on it. Pfsense was based on it at one time, not sure if it still is. Juniper uses it. If you go check out the FreeBSD Foundation donations pages you'll see Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Netflix, and others.

Reality is that on the server and in the data center all I need from an OS is a near posix userland and wired network and storage drivers.