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# Cutting LLM Costs Without Cutting Quality: How to Beat Proprietary LLMs with Fine-Tuned Open Source


- **Date:** Thursday, Jul 9, 2026
- **Time:** 16:10–16:40 (30 min)
- **Room:** Stage 9
- **Event:** World Congress 2026 Europe

## Recording

[Watch recording](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100151-cutting-llm-costs-without-cutting-quality-how-to-beat-proprietary-llms-with-fine-tuned-open-source)

## Description

Let's cut through the hype: most AI agents never make it past the demo stage. The gap between a working prototype and a production-grade system comes down to one thing—evaluation.
Without reliable metrics, you're guessing at what's working, what needs fixing, and whether your agents are actually improving. You'll learn how to:
- Define custom metrics tailored to your use case
- Calibrate LLM judges for cost-effective assessments
- Track evaluation results over time to measure real progress

Whether you're building LLM-powered apps or leading AI teams, you'll leave with actionable tools to move from proof-of-concept to production—with the transparency and reliability enterprises demand.

## Speaker

### [Viktoria Semaan](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@viktoria-semaan)

Principal AI Evangelist at databricks


## Related talks at this congress

- [Fine-Tuning Small Language Models for Agentic AI](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1389-fine-tuning-small) — Björn Buchhold
- [Rules, Heuristics, or LLMs? Lessons from Solving the Same Problem Twice](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1113-rules-heuristics-or) — Artur Naumenko
- [LLMs in the wild: Building an AI agent that survives production](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1363-llms-in-the-wild) — Steven Mi, Giampaolo Casolla
- [From Hallucination to Justification: Hands-On Explainability for LLMs](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/world-congress-2026-europe/sessions/1239-from-hallucination) — Lucía Conde-Moreno, Tessel Haagen