You Can Finally Build Your Own LLM. Here’s Why You Probably Shouldn’t.

The technology is finally within reach for individuals and small teams, which is exactly why so many of them are about to waste a lot of money. The build-versus-buy decision is mostly a math problem, and most people are solving it wrong. There is a specific moment that hits a lot of engineers in 2026. You have been paying API bills to OpenAI or Anthropic for months, watching the per-token charges tick up, and a thought lands: why am I renting this? The models are out there. The hardware is affordable. I could just build my own. And the thought is not crazy.