Could your company actually run it? An honest answer

A model published as a free download invites the thought « we could run this ourselves ». For the eight-billion-parameter size, that is technically true. For the seventy-billion one, it is true only if you own serious hardware. Neither answer is the useful one.

The useful answer is that running a model is the easy part, and almost nobody’s difficulty lies there.

What running it actually involves

A machine with a capable graphics card, someone who can install the software, and about a day. That part genuinely is within reach of a Swiss SME with one technical person, and the March post on hardware prices still holds.

Then comes the rest. Keeping it patched. Deciding what happens when the machine fails. Connecting it to the documents your staff actually need it to see, which is a separate project of its own. Answering the question from a colleague who says it gave a worse answer than the free tool they use at home.

The honest comparison

Against a hosted service under a Swiss or European contract, self-hosting wins on exactly one axis: nothing leaves your premises. It loses on cost, on effort, on capability, and on the Friday-afternoon question.

If that one axis is decisive for you — a law practice, a medical office, a firm under a client confidentiality clause that forbids third-party processing — then it is decisive, and the option now exists in a Swiss-built form, which is genuinely new.

If it is not decisive, self-hosting is a hobby you will pay for in your own time.

The middle path most companies should look at

Ask a Swiss hosting provider whether they will run an open model for you, in their data centre, under contract. This is not exotic; several do it. You get the data-residency answer without becoming an operator.

That is the question worth asking this month, and it takes one email. « Can you host an open model for us, and what would it cost per month? »