> hedge against the various tail risks of third-party providers raising prices

They could 10X the prices and you’d still be better off. It’s also unlikely that prices go up enough to warrant a $100K local investment to prevent paying a couple bucks per million tokens.

> or denying you service

I guess you’re not familiar with OpenRouter? There are many providers there. There are providers outside of OpenRouter. There will always be someone to take your business.

> or somehow abusing your data...

If data security is your concern then you’re better renting a server as needed still.

If you cannot tolerate any data leaving, then local models are the only way. You pay a high premium for it!