The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) · Saturday, September 5, 2026
Cliff Weitzman argued that running open-source models on self-owned hardware is significantly more cost-effective than using third-party token-based services. He noted that this approach allows for a cost per token that is a 'fraction of a fraction of a cent'.
“The next thing that we found is actually if you run open source models for coding, you can pay anthropic. You're paying for all the tokens and the fact that you're doing the branded, right, the fable one.”
“Or you can run an open source model and instead of running it on a spot instance from Azure or whatever else, you run it on your own hardware. And then you're paying a fraction of a fraction of a cent per token.”