What does it actually take to self‑host models like DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi?

I’m a SaaS/AI founder and I’m trying to understand the real requirements to host the larger open‑source models (DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi‑style models) on my own infra instead of using hosted APIs.

reddit

+4

If you’ve done this in production or a serious homelab:

– What VRAM / GPU setup are you using, and what did it cost?

– Did you go on‑prem or rent GPUs (RunPod, Lambda, etc.)?

– What ended up being the real bottleneck: cost, ops complexity, or model performance?

Any “if I were starting today, I’d do X instead of Y” stories would be super helpful.