How Peter Steinberger (Openclaw creator) Spent $1.3 Million in AI Tokens (And Didn't Pay the Bill)

Peter Steinberger, the creator of an open-source project called OpenClaw and now an OpenAI employee, posted a screenshot showing he had burned through roughly $1.3 million in OpenAI API tokens in 30 days. He does not pay the bill himself: OpenAI covers it as a work perk.

The screenshot, shared on X and reported by Business Insider, came from a tool called CodexBar that tracks token spending across AI coding tools. It showed close to $20,000 spent in a single day. Both the monthly total and the day figure are self-reported by Steinberger and have not been independently verified.

What he says the money does

Steinberger said most of the spend goes into developing OpenClaw, his open-source project. (The source does not explain in detail what OpenClaw actually is, beyond calling it an AI agent.) He also described AI agents that sit in on his meetings, start tasks based on what he says, and triage comments for spam.

He framed the spending as an experiment in "how would we build software in the future if tokens don't matter?" He also claimed the project runs "extremely lean" on the back of that automation, a phrasing several commenters pushed back on given the seven-figure monthly bill.

Why people noticed

Free compute has become a recruiting tool in the AI industry, and OpenAI reportedly runs an internal token-spend leaderboard. Steinberger's post landed in that context. Critics on X asked whether the money would be better spent hiring engineers. Steinberger has separately described the OpenAI tokens as "perks of OpenAI supporting OpenClaw."

What This Means for You

If you run a small business and pay your own API bills, do not benchmark against this. A staff engineer at the company that prints the tokens is not a useful comparison. Track your own cost per task, set hard monthly caps on any API key, and treat any vendor-published "lean" claim with skepticism when the vendor is also the bill payer.