Custom LLM Development Services: Securing and Customizing Your AI Stack
AI is no longer just a buzzword.
It’s infrastructure.
And at the heart of that infrastructure, for many companies, are large language models—LLMs. But not every business is eager to feed proprietary data into a public black box like ChatGPT or Claude. That’s where private LLMs come in.
A private LLM is your own large language model—custom-built or fine-tuned to run securely within your environment. Unlike public APIs from OpenAI, Anthropic, or others, private LLMs aren’t subject to vendor-imposed rate limits, shifting policies, or hidden data-sharing risks. You control the data. You control the stack. You control the outcome.
As organizations move toward greater AI integration, the demand for private LLMs is rising fast. DEV helps businesses of all sizes design, develop, and deploy these models—from proof of concept to full production—securely, efficiently, and without the usual headaches.
Why Private LLMs Are Gaining Traction
The rise of AI-native companies—those building products, internal tools, or decision-making pipelines powered by language models—has made one thing painfully clear: public APIs have limits. You can’t control latency. You can’t inspect how your data is used. And if your provider goes down or changes its terms? Tough luck.
Data sovereignty laws are also pushing more companies toward self-hosted solutions. In industries like finance, law, healthcare, and defense, sending sensitive documents across third-party APIs just isn’t an option.
Think of a legal firm that needs to analyze thousands of contracts in real-time but can’t afford a breach. Or a healthcare provider using a model to parse patient records under HIPAA restrictions. These aren’t hypothetical. Real companies are deploying models like LLaMA 3, Falcon, or even enterprise-tuned versions of Mistral in closed environments for exactly these reasons. They need speed, control, and trust. And that’s exactly what private LLMs deliver.
What Goes Into Private LLM Development
Building a private LLM isn’t about flipping a switch. It’s an intentional process—one that starts with understanding your goals and ends with a model you actually trust. Let’s break down what it takes.
Model Selection
The foundation is choosing the right model. Open-source options like LLaMA 3, Mistral, Mixtral, and Falcon are leading the charge. But it’s not just a matter of picking the biggest one. Larger models mean higher hardware costs and longer inference times. Sometimes a smaller model, fine-tuned on your data, outperforms a bloated generic one.
Licensing also matters. Some models are fully open. Others have strings attached. DEV.co helps you evaluate the trade-offs before you commit.
Data Integration & Fine-Tuning
A model is only as smart as the data you feed it. That’s where fine-tuning comes in. We ingest your internal documentation, PDFs, Slack threads, customer emails, wiki pages—whatever gives your LLM the context it needs to speak your language.
Want to avoid full fine-tuning? That’s okay, too. Techniques like retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) let your LLM “look up” data on the fly, combining it with prompt engineering or lightweight adapters like LoRA or QLoRA to deliver fast, accurate responses. We don’t just plug in your data—we build a full pipeline to keep it refreshed and secure.
Infrastructure & Deployment
Next up: the actual deployment. This isn’t one-size-fits-all. You might need an on-prem solution that satisfies strict compliance requirements. Or maybe a private cloud setup that scales with your usage.
We handle everything from GPU provisioning to container orchestration. We lock it down with access control, audit logs, and compliance protocols—SOC2, HIPAA, whatever your auditors demand. And yes, we optimize inference so your users aren’t stuck waiting five seconds for a response.
Agentic AI Overlay
LLMs are more than chatbots. With the right tools, they can act. Think LangChain, AutoGen, or n8n.io—these orchestration frameworks turn your model into an agent that can reason through tasks, interact with APIs, query databases, even analyze charts.
We help you wrap your private LLM in agentic logic that automates workflows, enhances decision-making, and ties into your existing systems. Whether it’s triaging emails, generating reports, or pulling insights from images, we’ve got the architecture to support it.
DEV.co’s Private LLM Development Services
At DEV.co, we don’t just build models. We build solutions. Need a proof of concept to test feasibility with your board? We’ll deliver a stripped-down MVP with just enough firepower to prove the idea. Ready to go full production? We’ll build and deploy a robust system that can handle real workloads, complete with LLMOps to keep it stable and evolving.
Our post-deployment services include monitoring, model updates, hallucination filtering, prompt audits, and more. We plug your private LLM into CRMs, ERPs, databases—whatever your team already uses. Every solution is tailored. Every deployment is production-ready. And every model is yours to own and evolve.
Industries We Serve
Some of our most transformative work has happened in high-stakes industries. Here’s a quick tour:
Legal
We help firms use LLMs for contract review, brief drafting, and eDiscovery. Imagine 20 hours of legal research done in two minutes—with citations.
Finance
From compliance flagging to SEC filing summaries, LLMs are unlocking huge efficiencies while keeping sensitive data in-house.
Healthcare
Clinical support tools built on private LLMs help physicians parse patient records, generate notes, and flag anomalies without compromising PHI.
SaaS / Enterprise IT
Think AI-powered documentation assistants, onboarding bots, and internal support chat that actually knows what it’s talking about.
Manufacturing / Industrial
We automate standard operating procedures, build digital twins, and enhance technician workflows using structured LLM pipelines. Whatever your niche, there’s a use case waiting to be built.
Pricing Models & Engagement Options
We keep things flexible so you can grow at your own pace. Need an MVP fast? We offer fixed-scope development to prove the concept. Want long-term support? Our monthly LLMOps retainers keep your model sharp, secure, and in sync with new data.
We also offer fully managed private LLM-as-a-service options, where we handle everything—hosting, updates, integration, monitoring—so your team can focus on results, not infrastructure.
Why DEV.co?
You’re not just hiring a team that builds software. You’re partnering with experts in AI, DevOps, security, and compliance. We’ve seen every angle—from training models on proprietary data lakes to deploying zero-trust inference endpoints on air-gapped systems.
Our proprietary accelerators cut development time. Our frameworks are battle-tested. And our mission is simple: give businesses real control over their AI.
Ready to Own Your AI Stack?
If you’re ready to move beyond API keys and rate limits—if you want an AI engine that runs on your data, your rules, and your infrastructure—then it’s time to talk. Schedule a discovery call with DEV.co. We’ll walk you through what’s possible, what it costs, and how soon we can get started.
And if you’re a technical decision-maker who wants the nitty-gritty, grab our downloadable whitepaper on private LLM architecture. It’s packed with specs, benchmarks, and deployment frameworks. Your data. Your model. Your future. Let’s build it together.
