AI server price: what a private AI assistant costs a small firm per year
What a private AI assistant costs a small firm per year: the server, the work around it, and how a managed machine compares with per-seat plans.
At a glance
- A desktop machine able to run a team’s AI assistant costs roughly $4,000 to $5,000 as of October 2026, and servers built around data-center graphics cards cost considerably more. The hardware is the smallest part of the bill.
- Joint guidance from the NSA, CISA and allied agencies expects whoever runs an AI system to apply hardware and software patches and to re-test the model before each new version goes live. A firm without IT staff pays a vendor to do that work.
- What a small biotech, CRO or device firm really chooses between is per-seat cloud assistants at about $20 a person a month, and a machine in the office that a vendor sets up and runs for a fixed annual price.
- IntraMuros, one such managed machine, costs £8,900 a year (Standard) or £21,900 a year (Advanced, the fit for 25 people or more), with no set-up fee and no charge per person.
- For 25 people, $20 seats cost about £4,800 a year at $1.25 to the pound, much less than Advanced. The case for the machine is the documents seats can’t read, access for everyone at no extra cost, and a fixed annual price.
An AI server that can run a private assistant for a small team starts at roughly $4,000 to $5,000 for a desktop machine, as of October 2026. NVIDIA’s DGX Spark, a desktop machine sold for running AI models, is in that range. Rack servers built around data-center graphics cards cost considerably more, and the price depends mostly on the cards. But the box is the smallest number you will pay. Someone has to set it up, connect it to your documents, update it, back it up and fix it, and at a 25-person biotech or CRO there is nobody on staff to do that. So the real price question is what a vendor charges to do all of it, and how that compares with the per-seat AI tools your staff already know.
All prices below are as of October 2026. Seat prices are in dollars as the vendors list them, and IntraMuros is priced in pounds. Where the two are compared, the conversion uses $1.25 to the pound, so use the day’s rate for your own budget.
Why the box is the small part of the bill
A machine in its packaging does nothing. Before staff can ask it about an SOP or a monitoring report, someone has to install the model and the chat software, connect it to the shared drive and the eQMS, and set it up so each person sees only the folders they are allowed to open. After that it needs looking after for as long as you use it.
That work doesn’t stop once the assistant is running. Joint guidance from the NSA, CISA and allied agencies on deploying AI systems securely is written for organizations that run AI systems built by someone else. It says to review hardware vendor notices for GPUs, CPUs and memory and apply the updates. When you move to a new model version, it calls for a full evaluation of accuracy, performance and security before you put it back in front of users. For a team that relies on the assistant to find the current SOP version, that re-test happens every time the model changes.
A firm with no IT team can’t take that on, and shouldn’t try. The practical choice is between an assistant in a vendor’s cloud and a machine in your office that a vendor runs for you.
Annual cost for a 25-person firm
| Option, as of October 2026 | What 25 people pay a year | Per person per month |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT Business or Claude Team, standard seats billed annually ($20 each) | $6,000, about £4,800 | $20, about £16 |
| The same seats billed monthly ($25 each) | $7,500, about £6,000 | $25, about £20 |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot Business add-on ($21 each, annual terms) | $6,300, about £5,040, on top of an eligible Microsoft 365 plan | $21, about £16.80 |
| Premium seats on ChatGPT Business or Claude Team ($100 each, annual) | $30,000, about £24,000 | $100, about £80 |
| IntraMuros Advanced, managed machine in your office | £21,900 | about £73 |
Microsoft also offers the Copilot add-on at $18 for the first year to existing eligible Microsoft 365 Business customers who order on annual terms between 1 July and 31 December 2026. ChatGPT Business prices vary by country, so check the price for yours. Enterprise cloud tiers such as ChatGPT Enterprise are sold through the vendor’s sales team, so their price is a quote.
On cash alone, standard seats win for 25 people: about £4,800 a year against £21,900 for Advanced, roughly four and a half times less. The fixed price only becomes the cheaper line in two cases:
- Against premium seats. Divide Advanced’s £1,825 a month by about £80 per premium seat and the crossover is about 23 people, so a 25-person team on premium seats pays slightly more than Advanced.
- At a much larger headcount. Against $20 seats, at about £16, the crossover is about 114 people. A firm that size will often have more than five to ten people asking at the same moment, which is more than Advanced is sized for, so it would be pricing Enterprise.
For a team of about ten with light, occasional use, Standard at £8,900 a year is the fit. Ten standard seats cost about £1,920 a year, so seats are cheaper there too. Against ten premium seats, about £9,600 a year, Standard is slightly cheaper, with the crossover at about 9 people.
What each price includes
| Per-seat cloud assistant | Managed machine in your office (IntraMuros) | |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware | None on your side, the vendor’s servers do the work | The machine comes with the service, and is swapped if you move up a tier |
| Set-up | Your admin creates accounts and connects apps | Included, with no set-up fee. Shipped in a couple of days and configured remotely in a few hours |
| Updates, monitoring, backups | The vendor’s, for its own service | Included, done by the vendor, along with repairs and replacement if the machine fails |
| Support | The vendor’s support for the plan | Included |
| Adding a person | Another seat | No charge |
| Who processes your prompts and documents | The AI vendor, on its servers. OpenAI says it does not train on business data by default | The model on the machine in your office. No AI company receives them |
| Documents it may read | Whatever your contracts allow you to send to that vendor | Documents, email and software such as your eQMS, eTMF, CTMS or ERP, under each person’s existing permissions |
The bottom row is where the comparison usually turns for a regulated firm.
What seats can’t do with sponsor and confidential documents
A CRO’s sponsor contracts, and a biotech’s agreements with its partners, often say where protocols, CSR drafts, monitoring reports and deviation records may be sent. Many keep sponsor data out of public AI tools. Under those terms a $20 seat is cheap but can’t touch the documents your team spends its day on. People use it for tidier emails and summaries of public guidance, and the work that matters still gets done by hand, or someone pastes a sponsor document into it anyway.
An enterprise cloud tier with a signed contract can sometimes satisfy those terms. Whether it does is a question for each sponsor agreement, so read the clauses before you assume either way.
A machine in your office changes what the assistant may read. The model runs on the machine, so the study team on sponsor A’s trial can ask about that protocol and its monitoring reports, and the QA lead can ask which SOP version was in force when a deviation was raised, without any of it reaching an AI company.
Two more differences show up in the budget:
- Everyone gets it. With seats, a firm usually buys licences for the heaviest users and leaves out the clinical operations assistant, the part-time QA auditor and the new hire. With a fixed price there is nothing to ration.
- The cost stays put. Year two costs the same as year one, and hiring ten people doesn’t change the invoice.
Where IntraMuros fits, and when seats are the better buy
IntraMuros is a managed machine for firms in pharma, biotech, medical devices and clinical research. Mayet, the British company behind it, delivers the machine and configures it remotely once you plug it in, so it is running within a week of signing. It connects the machine to your documents, email and software, whether those sit in your office or in the cloud, and then keeps it updated, monitored and backed up, replacing it if it fails. Nobody on your side needs IT skills.
Staff use the assistant, MURO, from a browser and sign in with the Microsoft or Google work account they already have. MURO works with that person’s permissions, so it reads only what they can already open, and every answer shows the document it came from. Your documents and conversations are never used to train any AI model, by Mayet or anyone else. Mayet connects to the machine to update, monitor and back it up, and sees system health, not your prompts, documents or conversations. Mayet is the one outside party that administers it, so add Mayet to your vendor list.
Pricing is per year and set by how many people use it at the same time: Standard £8,900 for one or two at once, Advanced £21,900 for about five to ten, Enterprise quoted, with more machines where the work needs them. Everyone in the company has access, with no charge per person and no set-up fee. When more people ask at once than the tier is sized for, nobody is turned away and questions wait their turn. See how it works and what it means for leadership.
Per-seat assistants are the better buy if your contracts let a cloud tool read the documents you work on, or if the help you want never touches confidential material. IntraMuros is also the wrong fit if you want to train or fine-tune your own models, or to run and adjust the machine yourself.
For the decision behind the price, whether AI should run inside your walls at all and who looks after it, see on-premise AI. For what “private” can mean across the options, see private AI for business.
Sources
- Deploying AI Systems Securely: Best Practices for Deploying Secure and Resilient AI Systems — NSA AISC, CISA, FBI and Five Eyes partners, April 2024 (v1.0)