OpenClaw Creator Says Token Use Cost About $10 Million in One Month

Oct 24, 2026
Peter Steinberger, the OpenAI staff member who created OpenClaw, estimated that his AI workloads used about $10 million in tokens last month, adding that not all of it was useful.

OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger estimated that his AI workloads consumed about $10 million in tokens last month, according to The Register. Steinberger, a member of technical staff at OpenAI, told the audience that "not all of that is useful."

Steinberger made the comments during Cloudflare Connect 2026 in San Francisco. He said current infrastructure has not caught up with agent use and questioned why these workloads still run on personal computers rather than in the cloud.

He also discussed controls for AI agents. Steinberger said users may not want to give an agent every permission, suggesting that a separate agent could approve or reject access requests.

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