Service · Custom & Specialized AI Models

Custom AI Model Development & LLM Fine-Tuning

A model built for your task beats a model built for everything.

When general-purpose AI is too slow, too expensive, too generic or can't leave your premises, Octobit8 fine-tunes, distils and trains specialised models that fit your data, your domain and your budget.

We'll tell you honestly if a well-engineered prompt or RAG system would get you there first. Custom models are worth it when the numbers say so — on accuracy, cost at scale, latency, privacy or language coverage.

Who is this for

Common profiles that get the most out of this service.

01

Accuracy has plateaued

Prompting and RAG have plateaued and the model still misreads your domain's terminology or formats.

02

Cost at scale

You run millions of calls a month and a smaller tuned model would do the job for a fraction of the price.

03

Latency-sensitive

Voice, real-time or on-device use cases need answers in milliseconds.

04

Privacy and sovereignty

Data can't be sent to third-party APIs, so the model must run in your own cloud or on-premise.

05

Consistency requirements

Outputs must follow a strict structure, tone or clinical, legal or brand style every single time.

06

Language coverage

You need strong performance in Hindi, other Indian languages or a low-resource language.

What sets it apart

Principles we apply on every engagement—so results are measurable, not just delivered.

Fine-tuned LLMs

Supervised fine-tuning and parameter-efficient methods (LoRA, QLoRA) on open-weight models such as Llama, Mistral, Qwen and Gemma, or managed fine-tuning on cloud platforms.

Preference-tuned models

Alignment with your experts' judgments using DPO and related techniques.

Distilled small language models

Compact models trained to reproduce a larger model's quality on your specific task, at much lower cost and latency.

Domain classifiers and extractors

Models for document classification, entity extraction, routing, triage and sentiment.

Embedding and re-ranking models

Custom retrieval models that make RAG far more accurate on specialised vocabulary.

Speech, vision and predictive ML

Fine-tuned speech recognition for accents and domain terms, vision models for documents or images, and classical ML for forecasting and risk.

Capabilities & deliverables

Concrete workstreams we plan, execute, and hand over with documentation and dashboards.

Fine-tuning & alignment

Adapting open-weight or managed models to your task.

  • ▸LoRA / QLoRA parameter-efficient fine-tuning
  • ▸Preference tuning (DPO) on expert judgments
  • ▸Managed fine-tuning on cloud platforms

Distillation & classifiers

Smaller, faster, cheaper models for narrow tasks.

  • ▸Distilled small language models
  • ▸Classification, extraction, routing and triage models
  • ▸Custom embedding and re-ranking models

Speech, vision & predictive ML

Beyond text, where classical or specialised models are the better tool.

  • ▸Accent- and domain-tuned speech recognition
  • ▸Vision models for documents and images
  • ▸Forecasting, pricing and risk models

What you get

Concrete deliverables from this engagement.

✓

Trained model weights that you own

✓

Training data pipeline and data card

✓

Evaluation report comparing the model with the baseline on quality, cost and latency

✓

Production serving endpoint and monitoring

✓

Retraining playbook

Additional benefits

▸Often needs less data than expected — a few thousand examples can work▸You own the fine-tuned weights and training data▸Designed for retraining as better base models appear▸Payback modelled before you commit to training spend

How we work with you

A phased approach with clear artifacts—so stakeholders see progress weekly, not only at launch.

01

Feasibility

We define the task, success metric, baseline with off-the-shelf models, and the cost and latency target.

  • Baseline benchmark
  • Go / no-go recommendation
02

Data strategy

Collect, clean, label and, where useful, synthetically expand your training data, with privacy controls and de-identification.

  • Training dataset
  • Data card
03

Training and experiments

Systematic experiments across base models, methods and hyperparameters, all tracked and reproducible.

  • Experiment log
  • Candidate models
04

Evaluation

Held-out test sets, expert review, bias and safety checks, and head-to-head comparison against the baseline.

  • Evaluation report
  • Bias/safety review
05

Optimisation & deployment

Quantisation, pruning and serving optimisation, then serving in your cloud or on-premise with monitoring and a retraining pipeline.

  • Serving endpoint
  • Drift monitoring
  • Retraining playbook

Use cases by industry

Where teams in our focus industries are already applying this service.

Travel & Hospitality

  • ▸Demand and dynamic-pricing models for fleets, rooms and packages
  • ▸Small, fast model for intent routing across millions of guest messages
  • ▸Review and feedback classifier by topic, sentiment and urgency

Healthcare

  • ▸Clinical note structuring and medical coding assistance
  • ▸De-identification model that removes patient identifiers from documents
  • ▸Specialised model for obstetrics and gynaecology documentation and patient education content

EdTech

  • ▸Automated essay and short-answer scoring aligned to your rubrics
  • ▸Question-generation model tuned to your curriculum and difficulty levels
  • ▸Indian-language tutor model for regional-medium learners

Stack & integrations

Representative tools—we meet you where your stack already lives and document every handoff.

Training

  • —PyTorch, Hugging Face Transformers
  • —PEFT, TRL, Axolotl, Unsloth

Serving

  • —vLLM, TGI, NVIDIA Triton
  • —llama.cpp, ONNX

Managed platforms

  • —Amazon SageMaker, Bedrock custom models
  • —Microsoft Foundry fine-tuning, Vertex AI tuning

Tracking & classical ML

  • —Weights & Biases, MLflow
  • —Label Studio, Argilla
  • —scikit-learn, XGBoost, LightGBM

Good to know

Data & licensing

  • ✓Often needs less data than expected — a few thousand high-quality examples can work
  • ✓You own the fine-tuned weights and training data, subject to the base model's licence, reviewed with you up front

Staying current

  • ✓Designed for retraining — when a better base model appears, your pipeline lets you re-tune and compare quickly
  • ✓Training cost is usually a small share of the total; savings come from cheaper, faster inference at scale

Engagement models

Model Feasibility Assessment

Fixed price, 2 weeks — benchmarks off-the-shelf models and estimates fine-tuning payback.

Fixed-scope Project

Milestone-based delivery to a production-served model.

Managed AI Operations

Monthly fee for drift monitoring, evaluation and retraining as usage grows.

Starter offer

Model Feasibility Assessment

2 weeks · [₹ / $ amount — confirm before publishing]

We benchmark 3–4 off-the-shelf models on your task and estimate what a fine-tuned model would deliver on quality, cost per 1,000 requests and latency. You get a clear go / no-go and a payback estimate.

Frequently asked questions

How much data do we need?▼
Often less than expected. Parameter-efficient fine-tuning can work with a few thousand high-quality examples, and we can help create or expand data where it's thin.
Who owns the model?▼
You own the fine-tuned weights and training data, subject to the base model's licence, which we review with you up front.
Will a custom model become outdated?▼
We design for retraining. When a better base model appears, your data pipeline and evaluation suite let you re-tune and compare quickly.
Is this expensive?▼
Training costs are usually a small share of the total; the savings come from cheaper, faster inference at scale. We model the payback before you commit.

Ready to talk specifics?

Share your goals, timelines, and stack—we will propose a scoped next step.