First I laughed, but now I’m seeing the genius.

I run tech for a midsize business, and consult for several small businesses. Aside from one 4-person company, all of the businesses I oversee found it less expensive to host their own LLM in Azure than to pay for OpenAI’s subscriptions. I’m talking 10% of the cost of subscriptions for the same functionality.

The midsize business in particular has only seen measurable benefit from more specialized/global applications of “AI” tools, such as integrating machine learning into data analytics. There are a ton of people who use the LLM chat, but I think the mishaps caused by the LLM may have undone any efficiency gains. Either way, I’m sure glad they’re not paying hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for it.