Open vs Closed LLMs: The Most Expensive Architecture Decision of 2025 Choosing between open-weight and closed APIs is the new ‘AWS vs on-prem’ — but with triple the consequences. My view is, this choice is not a technical preference. The year is 2025. Every enterprise is an AI enterprise. The core decision for every engineering leader is no longer if to adopt Large Language Models, but how. This choice—between calling a third-party, closed-source API (like OpenAI’s GPT-4o or Anthropic’s Claude 3) and self-hosting an open-weight model (like Llama 3 or Mistral) — has rapidly evolved from a technical preference into the single most impactful architecture decision you will make this year. ...
Your team didn’t get faster when you moved to microservices — it just got busier. The Microservice Paradox Let’s be clear. Microservices were supposed to make you move fast. They promised small teams, clean ownership, and quick deployments. You know, the full Silicon Valley dream — chai in one hand, kubectl in the other. It was supposed to be the architectural equivalent of getting an automatic transmission in Bangalore traffic: smooth, effortless movement where before there was grinding anxiety. ...