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Private LLM Development

AI that stays on your infrastructure.

Self-hosted Llama, Mistral, Qwen, and DeepSeek deployments engineered for enterprise data privacy, compliance, and per-token cost predictability — with the inference, fine-tuning, and observability stack to make them work in production.

SOC2-friendly architectures · HIPAA-compatible deployments · Air-gapped configurations · Senior AI engineering

Why teams move off hosted APIs.

There are exactly four reasons enterprises self-host. If even one applies strongly, it's worth a conversation.

1

Data sovereignty

Your prompts and outputs never leave your network. Anything covered by a DPA, BAA, or policy stays in your VPC.

2

Cost predictability

Above ~5–10M tokens/day, self-hosted costs less per token — and the cost is flat, not variable per query.

3

Compliance & audit

Real audit logs, real retention controls, real access reviews — not a vendor's certification page.

4

Latency & availability

Co-located inference removes the hosted round-trip and the dependency on a provider's uptime.

Hosted API vs. private LLM — honest comparison.

Hosted APIPrivate LLM
Time to first tokenMinutesDays–weeks
Frontier capabilityBest-in-classStrong open models (not always frontier)
Per-token cost at low volumeVery lowHigh (fixed GPU cost)
Per-token cost at high volumeLinear, expensiveFlat → effectively free
Data sovereigntyProvider's DPAYours, period
Fine-tuningLimitedFull (LoRA, QLoRA, SFT, DPO)
Operational burdenNear-zeroGPU ops, model lifecycle, eval
Best forPrototyping, frontier reasoningRegulated data, high volume, latency-sensitive

Open models we deploy.

We re-benchmark on every meaningful release. These are the families running in production today.

Llama (Meta)

The safe default — broad capability, huge ecosystem, long context. 8B / 70B / 405B.

Mistral / Mixtral

The cost/throughput pick. MoE architecture, strong function-calling, permissive licenses.

Qwen (Alibaba)

Multilingual + tool-use leader. Strong code benchmarks at every size class.

DeepSeek

Exceptional reasoning-per-dollar. Outstanding cost-per-quality, strong code performance.

Three reference architectures we deploy.

01

Privacy-first single-tenant

Dedicated GPUs, often air-gapped. For regulated healthcare, defense, financial services. Highest sovereignty.

02

Cost-optimized multi-tenant

Shared GPU pool with model routing and aggressive batching. For AI-native SaaS, optimized for unit economics.

03

Hybrid private + hosted

Private LLM for high-volume routine work, hosted frontier for complex reasoning. Best first-year ROI.

How we engage on private LLM projects.

Discovery & Architecture
2–3 weeks
from $28,000
  • Workload modeling + model benchmark
  • Reference architecture + cost model
  • 12-month TCO vs. hosted
Start Discovery
Production Deployment
6–12 weeks
from $95,000
  • Infrastructure + vLLM/TGI deployment
  • Quantization + fine-tuning if applicable
  • Gateway, SSO, observability, security review
Start a Deployment
Managed Operations
monthly
from $14,000/mo
  • Quarterly model migration evals
  • Fine-tuning iterations + infra tuning
  • On-call + monthly reports
Discuss Managed Ops

Common questions.

Llama vs. Mistral vs. Qwen vs. DeepSeek?
Depends on workload. Llama is the safe default. Mistral wins on throughput economics. Qwen wins on multilingual and tool use. DeepSeek wins on reasoning-per-dollar. We benchmark on your data first.
What hardware do I need?
From a single L40S for a 7B model up to a cluster of 8–16 H100s for a 70B model at production scale. Discovery sizes the hardware to your workload.
How does cost compare to OpenAI?
Break-even is usually 5–10M tokens/day. Above 50M tokens/day, private is typically 70–90% cheaper per token, with zero variance.
Can we fine-tune?
Yes — LoRA, QLoRA, full SFT, DPO. Often LoRA is sufficient and far cheaper. Included in the Production Deployment when in-scope.
Can it be deployed air-gapped?
Yes. Models, dependencies, and weights pre-staged. No outbound internet from the inference cluster.
Do you handle SOC2 / HIPAA paperwork?
We architect to the framework and produce the evidence your auditor needs. Your security team and auditor own the certification itself.

Run the numbers.

A 30-minute call: token volume, sensitivity, latency requirements. We'll tell you honestly whether private LLM makes sense at your scale — and if not, what does.