Self-Hosted LLM AI Agent: Deploy with Full Data Control
Deploy your own AI agent on private infrastructure with complete data ownership. Run LLMs like GPT-4, Llama, or Mistral on your own AWS, Azure, or on-premises servers: with Ethora’s RAG pipeline, XMPP messaging layer, and enterprise-grade security built in.
Self-hosted LLM
What Is a Self-Hosted LLM?
A self-hosted LLM (Large Language Model) is an AI model that runs on infrastructure you control (your own servers, a private cloud account, or an on-premises data centre) instead of calling a third-party API like OpenAI or Anthropic. Self-hosting means your data, prompts, and AI responses never leave your security perimeter.
There are two approaches to self-hosting LLMs:
- Run an open-source model locally: deploy models like Llama 3, Mistral, Phi, or Falcon directly on your GPU-equipped servers. All inference happens on your hardware. No data leaves your network.
- Use a commercial API through a self-hosted proxy: route API calls to OpenAI, Anthropic, or other providers through your own middleware that handles logging, rate limiting, and data governance. Your AI agent runs on your infrastructure even though inference uses an external API.
Ethora supports both approaches. You can run fully local models for maximum data isolation (required for HIPAA, SOC 2, and classified environments), use commercial APIs for maximum capability, or combine both in a hybrid configuration where different tasks use different models based on sensitivity and performance requirements.
Your security perimeter
Everything stays inside your network
Data, prompts and AI responses never leave your network.
Model-agnostic
Supported LLM Models
Ethora’s AI agent framework is model-agnostic. You choose the LLM that fits your use case, budget, and compliance requirements.
Llama 3 / 3.1
Open-source (Meta) · general-purpose, code, multilingual.
Mistral / Mixtral
Open-source · fast, cost-effective inference.
Phi-3
Open-source (Microsoft) · small model for edge deployment.
Falcon
Open-source (TII) · multilingual, enterprise use.
GPT-4 / GPT-4o
Commercial API (OpenAI) · highest capability, complex reasoning.
Claude
Commercial API (Anthropic) · long context, safety, analysis.
Custom fine-tuned
Your model · domain-specific accuracy, full local deployment.
For fully local deployment, typical hardware requirements are: 16 GB+ RAM for 7B-parameter models, 32-64 GB for 13B-30B models, and one or more NVIDIA A100/H100 GPUs for 70B+ models. Ethora TechOps can help you size infrastructure for your specific model and throughput requirements.
How RAG Works: Teaching Your AI Agent About Your Business
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) makes a general-purpose LLM useful for your specific business: it retrieves relevant information from your own documents and feeds it to the model alongside the user’s question. Your agent answers about your products, policies and procedures without fine-tuning, and the knowledge base updates instantly when you add a document.
01 · Grounded answers
Answers grounded in your actual data
Instead of relying on generic training data, the agent cites the exact documents it used: so every answer is accurate, current and traceable back to your knowledge base.
Document ingestion
Ethora’s document indexer processes your files (PDFs, Word docs, spreadsheets, web pages) and extracts the text. The website crawler can also index your site on a schedule.
Vector embeddings
The text is split into chunks and converted into vector embeddings (numerical representations of meaning) with an embedding model, then stored in a vector database.
Retrieval
When a user asks a question, the system turns the question into a vector and finds the most semantically similar chunks from your knowledge base.
Generation
The retrieved chunks are included as context in the prompt sent to the LLM, which generates an answer grounded in your actual data: able to cite sources and provide references.
Self-Hosted LLM vs Cloud AI APIs: Which Should You Choose?
Choosing between a self-hosted model and a cloud AI API comes down to your data, compliance, and scale requirements. Here is how they compare across the decisions that matter.
Self-Hosted LLM
The bottom line
With Ethora, you do not have to choose one or the other. The hybrid approach lets you route sensitive queries (containing PHI, PII, or proprietary data) to your self-hosted model while using commercial APIs for general tasks: all managed through a single AI agent interface integrated with Ethora’s messaging infrastructure.
Take Control of Your AI Infrastructure
A self-hosted LLM-powered AI agent is more than just an application. It’s an independent, compliant AI system that adapts to your business needs. Here are some of the benefits it offers.
Data privacy and compliance
Keep sensitive data in your systems, ensuring alignment with GDPR, HIPAA, and other regulations.
Custom model training
Fine-tune your AI on proprietary datasets without exposing intellectual property to third parties.
Cost efficiency
At enterprise scale, it’s often more cost-effective to host your own AI agent than to rely on third-party providers.
Regulatory readiness
If you work in a highly regulated field such as finance or healthcare, self-hosting is the most secure option.
Deployment options
Flexible Self-Hosting Solutions
Ethora supports several deployment options for your self-hosted AI agent. Choose the best fit depending on your infrastructure.
Dedicated server deployment
A dedicated server instance available with Ethora’s enterprise plan: the fastest self-hosting option, with infrastructure and security fully managed.
AWS and cloud infrastructure
Deploy Ethora’s AI agent on your own cloud provider (AWS, Azure, GCP), leveraging your existing DevOps and cloud security policies.
On-premises installation
Ensure ultimate control over your data with full on-premises deployments: the perfect choice for organizations with strict data residency and sovereignty requirements.
Kubernetes & container orchestration
Scale dynamically with containerized deployments managed through Kubernetes, ensuring high availability, resilience, and portability.
Support for Large Language Models
Flexible integrations with open-source and commercial models let you use the LLM of your choice and pivot when you need to.
Deploy Llama, Mistral, Falcon, or other community-driven models.
Train models on your proprietary datasets for domain-specific accuracy.
Run multiple LLMs in parallel for specialized use cases.
Adjust compute resources and GPU/TPU allocations for better optimization.
Security
Bank-Level Security for Your AI Agents
Security is at the heart of Ethora’s self-hosted deployments. Our solution is compliance-ready and provides top-notch protection for your data.
Data encryption
All data at rest and in transit is encrypted with enterprise-grade standards.
Network isolation
Deploy agents within private VPCs and segmented networks.
Audit trails
Maintain detailed records for regulatory audits and compliance logging.
Access control & authentication
Role-based permissions prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data.
Scalability
Scale as You Grow
A self-hosted LLM agent is optimized for your workloads, so your system grows with your business: without bottlenecks.
Hardware optimization
Tailor compute, storage, and GPUs to your specific use case.
Load balancing & high availability
Ensure continuous uptime with distributed nodes.
Performance monitoring
Track response times, throughput, and model efficiency with built-in dashboards.
Benchmarking
Measure and optimize against industry benchmarks to keep your AI competitive.
Train AI Agents on Your Proprietary Data
Empower your AI agent with your business context. Train it on your data so it provides users with relevant, accurate information: not generic answers. Ethora offers advanced fine-tuning and knowledge augmentation.
Dataset preparation
Automatically clean and structure your proprietary data.
Model fine-tuning
Customize base LLMs to perform exceptionally well on your tasks.
Continuous learning
Feed your system new data over time for ongoing improvement.
Document indexing
Let AI learn from your knowledge base, manuals, and other documentation.
Website crawler
Accelerate learning by letting your AI periodically study your website with the RAG automation tool.
Learn moreIndustries
Self-Hosted AI for Regulated Industries
Self-hosted AI agents are an excellent choice for industries where compliance is non-negotiable.
Healthcare
Deploy HIPAA-compliant agents for patient support, medical records processing, and clinical guidance.
Finance
Ensure SOC 2 and SOX compliance while enabling fraud detection, risk assessment, and customer service automation.
Government & security
Run AI locally for classified environments where public cloud services are not permitted.
Deployment plan
Plan Your Self-Hosted AI Deployment
Every enterprise has unique requirements. With Ethora, you can design a deployment strategy custom-tailored to your needs. It takes three main steps:
- Requirements assessment: analyze your business goals, compliance, and infrastructure.
- Infrastructure planning: choose between dedicated servers, cloud hosting, or on-premises.
- Migration strategy: ensure a smooth transition to a fully self-hosted system.
Save Months of Work with Ethora
Build any chat use case into your product: in hours.
Free
- Community Support
- 30 Days of Free Support
- No Credit Card Required
Small Business
- Tech Support
- SLA 99.9%
- AI Allowance
- Custom Domain
Enterprise
- 24/7 Phone Support
- Self-hosted AI
- Custom Configuration
- Dedicated / On-prem hosting
Trusted by teams shipping regulated communication
Taras and the Ethora team are a reliable partner in messaging, tokenization and AI. Great communication and products.
I have worked with Ethora and team since 2018. They have been absolutely amazing and life-saving across multiple of my portfolio projects.
We partnered with Dappros/Ethora on an EU project and they successfully delivered the technology component. Highly recommended.
Ethora has successfully helped us ideate and deliver multiple digital transformation projects in Qatar and the MENA region. A reliable and knowledgable partner.
Ethora technology and expertise were instrumental in delivering Atom Connect, our product for streamlined communication in the workers’ comp market.
Ethora helped us deliver our AI agent solution, letting subscribers access context-specific insights from our vast library of expert content. Their LLM and chat-bot expertise is an excellent match for our AI strategy.
Ethora has been an exceptional strategic development partner for Preshent. Not just a vendor, but a core contributor to the future of our platform and company.
Ethora helped us ideate and deliver multiple digital transformation projects across Qatar and the MENA region. A reliable, knowledgable partner.
Our Case Studies
Dr. Talks is one of the most prominent organizers of online healthcare conferences and summits.
Ethora enabled them to create a context-aware AI-powered chatbot to help users navigate thousands of pages of medical content, correctly referencing pages, authors, videos and timestamps. 100% secure and HIPAA-compliant.
This assistant enhances user experience by simplifying interaction with the platform and reducing search time.
- 1000+ summits indexed by AI bot
- Instant user engagement
- Vector embeddings enable intelligent domain expert AI responses
Atom Advantage is a provider of innovative AI powered workers compensation and health insurance solutions in the United States.
Ethora engine has enabled Atom Connect product used for communication between injured workers, nurses, and caseworkers. AI-powered, with documents exchange, and compliant with all regulations such as HIPAA and SOC2.
This solution reduces manual labour for caseworkers and improves patients experience.
- Integration into caseworkers web portal
- White-labelled mobile app for chat and health documents wallet for injured workers
- Instant messaging between caseworkers and injured workers
Explore Related Solutions
Combine your self-hosted AI agent with Ethora’s full messaging and AI platform.
Self-hosted chat server
Deploy a dedicated messaging server alongside your AI agent on AWS, Azure, GCP or on-premises.
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Automatically index your business website for AI-powered responses.
Read moreDocument indexer for RAG
Process PDFs, docs and unstructured files for your AI knowledge base.
Read moreEmbeddable AI chat widget
Deploy your AI agent as a widget on any website.
Read moreReact Chat SDK
Integrate AI-powered chat into your web application.
Read moreReact Native Chat SDK
Bring AI chat to iOS and Android with a single codebase.
Read moreSee pricing plans for self-hosted deployment options.
