Questions about PoS and ETH 2.0’s solutions

Hi, I have a couple of questions which I cant find the answer for online, so came to see if this community can help answer any/all of them:

1. The requirements to become a validator are somewhat low (32 ETH and a modest hardware setup). What stops corps just hosting a lot of nodes and does this defeat the purpose of decentralisation?

2. I understand that you stake to have access to a virtual validator. What exactly is this virtual validator and does it exist within the EVM?

Thanks in advance