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Open weights don't make a 1T model cheap to run

A developer's analysis of Mistral Large 4 finds that the model's open weights do not translate into cheap self-hosting: with 1.05T total parameters and 52B active per token, the full expert set must stay resident in GPU memory, requiring roughly a terabyte of FP8 weights before any KV cache. The writeup calculates that an 8x B200 node (1,440 GB), rented at about $53.52 per hour, would need to sustain roughly 7,100 output tokens per second all month to beat Mistral's preview API price, concluding that open weights mainly serve as an option capping vendor leverage and pay off only for organizations already running GPU clusters.

by read1 min views1 publishedOct 15, 2026

Mistral Large 4 is 1.05T parameters with 52B active per token. The 52B sets your compute. The 1T sets your memory, because every expert has to stay resident in GPU memory for the router to pick it. At FP8 that is about a terabyte of weights before any KV cache.

That makes 8x B200 (1,440 GB) the first single node I'd plan FP8 on. Rented at about $53.52 an hour, it has to sustain roughly 7,100 output tokens per second all month to beat Mistral's preview API price, about 3,600 at list price. Most teams won't have that concurrency.

My read: the open weights matter most as an option that caps vendor leverage. Running them yourself pays off only for organisations that already run GPU clusters.

Memory tables, hardware tiers and the break-even chart: Mistral Large 4 is Open-Weight, But Not Easy to Run

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