Peter Steinberger, creator of the open-source “OpenClaw” project and an engineer at OpenAI, reportedly generated a high OpenAI API bill during a 30-day period. Accounts across outlets describe a screenshot showing roughly $1.3 million in API costs, amounting to nearly $20,000 per day. The reported usage includes an estimated 603 billion tokens delivered through about 7.6 million requests over the month. The figures are tied to running approximately 100 Codex instances concurrently for OpenClaw, which uses automated coding agents.
The disclosures have drawn attention to the practical costs of running autonomous coding tools at scale, particularly when multiple model instances are active simultaneously. While most coverage focuses on the size of the bill and its visibility, the reported data centers on volume-based metrics—requests and tokens—rather than changes to pricing or billing terms. Business Insider and The Next Web both emphasize the screenshot as the basis for the cost estimate, while other coverage notes the magnitude of the reported spending.
