OpenClaw creator used $1.3M OpenAI tokens

Peter Steinberger’s $1,305,088.81 OpenAI token bill is less a consumer-price anecdote than a snapshot of what large-scale agent development looks like when compute constraints are loosened. The figure, reported on May 18 by PC Gamer and echoed by other outlets, came from a screenshot of Steinberger’s public usage dashboard covering a 30-day span in April and May 2026. The dashboard showed 603 billion tokens processed across 7.6 million requests. Steinberger, who joined OpenAI in February, said the spend reflected a deliberate effort to test how software gets built “if tokens don’t matter.” ### Where did the $1.3 million figure come from? The $1,305,088.81 total came from a screenshot Steinberger posted from his OpenAI dashboard, according to PC Gamer-derived coverage and follow-up reports. The tally covered a rolling 30-day period and was tied to OpenAI API usage rather than a one-off training run or product launch. (tech.yahoo.com) The same dashboard entries showed 603 billion tokens and 7.6 million requests. Several reports said the top model listed was GPT-5.5, dated April 23, 2026. ### What was Steinberger’s team doing with that usage? A three-person team led by Steinberger was running about 100 Codex instances in the cloud for work tied to OpenClaw, according to The Decoder. (tech.yahoo.com) Those agents reviewed pull requests, looked for security issues in commits, deduplicated issues, wrote fixes and monitored benchmarks, the report said. (thenextweb.com) The same report said some agents opened pull requests based on the project’s roadmap, while others listened to meetings and started pull requests for discussed features. That description has not been independently detailed in source code or a technical paper in the material reviewed here, but it matches Steinberger’s public framing of the system as an agent-heavy software workflow. (the-decoder.com) ### Why was OpenAI paying for it? OpenAI was covering the bill because Steinberger works there, multiple reports said. Steinberger joined OpenAI in February 2026 after building OpenClaw as an open-source project, and OpenClaw said at the time that the project would move into an independent foundation that OpenAI would help fund. The February announcement said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had hired Steinberger to help drive “the next generation of personal agents.” OpenClaw’s blog also said the project would remain open source under an independent governance structure. (the-decoder.com) ### Did Steinberger defend the cost? Steinberger said the spending was part of an experiment in building software without treating token prices as the main constraint, according to The Decoder and follow-up coverage. (tech.yahoo.com) He also said turning off “Fast Mode” would cut costs by 70%. When asked about return on investment, Steinberger said the team’s output was open source and worked with leading proprietary and open models, according to The Decoder. (openclaws.io) That leaves the public record centered on usage scale and workflow design, rather than on a formal revenue target or commercial launch tied to the spending. (the-decoder.com) ### What does this tell us about OpenClaw right now? OpenClaw is still being developed under an open-source structure even after Steinberger moved to OpenAI in February. The project’s own announcement said community maintainers would continue driving development and that OpenAI would contribute funding and resources through the foundation structure. The next concrete milestone is continued development under that foundation model, with Steinberger now at OpenAI and OpenClaw still operating as an open-source project backed by outside contributors and OpenAI funding announced on February 15-16, 2026. (the-decoder.com) (openclaws.io)