[digitallyfree]

For a single unit one could have it in their home or office, rather than a datacenter or colo. If the user sets up and manages the machine themselves there is no additional IT cost. The greatest operating expense would be the power cost.

[dekhn]

"If the user sets up and manages the machine themselves there is no additional IT cost" << how much do you value your time?

In my experience, physical hardware has a management overhead over cloud resources. Backups, large disk storage for big models, etc.