OpenClaw creator burned through $1.3 million in OpenAI API tokens in a single month — bill covered 603 billion tokens across 7.6 million requests and 100 coding agents
Peter Steinberger, creator of OpenClaw and an OpenAI employee, incurred $1.3 million in OpenAI API costs over 30 days through the use of approximately 100 AI coding agents. The usage amounted to 603 billion tokens across 7.6 million requests, with costs covered by OpenAI. Steinberger noted that disabling 'Fast Mode' would reduce the bill to around $300,000, highlighting the high cost variance in AI-assisted development.
- ▪Peter Steinberger's team used roughly 100 Codex instances to generate 603 billion tokens across 7.6 million API requests in one month.
- ▪OpenAI covers the $1.3 million cost, which reflects usage under Codex's 'Fast Mode' pricing that significantly increases token consumption.
- ▪Disabling Fast Mode would reduce the cost to approximately $300,000, still equivalent to about 60 Codex Pro subscriptions.
- ▪The AI agents autonomously perform tasks like reviewing pull requests, scanning for security issues, and generating feature proposals based on meetings.
- ▪OpenAI estimates average Codex costs at $100–$200 per developer monthly, though usage like Steinberger's shows extreme variance in real-world scenarios.
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Tech Industry Artificial Intelligence OpenClaw creator burned through $1.3 million in OpenAI API tokens in a single month — bill covered 603 billion tokens across 7.6 million requests and 100 coding agents News By Luke James published 17 May 2026 Peter Steinberger's three-person team runs 100 AI coding agents on OpenAI's tab. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Getty Images) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Peter Steinberger, the Austrian developer behind OpenClaw who joined OpenAI in February, posted a screenshot of his API usage dashboard on Friday…
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