Title: Discussion 13 — Why Self-Host Below the Break-Even Point?
Course: AIINFRA 302: AI Security, Guardrails & Governance > Section: Week 13 — GPU FinOps Foundations: Cost per 1,000 Requests and Right-Sizing

💬 Discussion 13 — Why Self-Host Below the Break-Even Point? (20 pts)

This week's lecture worked through a concrete example: at roughly 50 million tokens/day, self-hosting on 4× A10G GPUs (\~\$5,175/month) loses decisively to the GPT-4o-mini API (\~\$2,250/month), and self-hosting only wins on raw infrastructure cost above roughly 11 billion tokens/month. Prompt: Given that break-even math, what would make a team choose to self-host anyway below that break-even point? Think beyond pure GPU-hour cost — consider factors like data privacy/compliance, latency requirements, model customization, vendor lock-in, rate limits, or team capability. Post a specific scenario (industry, workload, or constraint) where you'd defend self-hosting even though the API is cheaper on paper, and explain the reasoning a FinOps-literate engineer would use to justify it to a skeptical finance stakeholder. Respond to at least two classmates — ideally by challenging their scenario (would the math actually hold up as their volume grows?) or by adding a factor they didn't consider.