Private AI Inference in 2026: HIPAA + GDPR Without the Hyperscaler Tax

Quick Answer: Running HIPAA-grade AI on AWS or Azure costs 3-4x more than bare metal, forces you into US jurisdiction, and still leaves your data visible to the hypervisor. I found a way to get hardware-sealed inference on H200 GPUs for $4.94/hr — with CPU-signed proof your data never left the enclave. TL;DR: I spent 3 hours setting up Azure Confidential Computing. Gave up. Then I benchmarked Intel TDX inference across 5 GPU tiers. TDX overhead: 5.2% on average. Cost vs Azure: 65% cheaper. Regu...