OpenClaw Creator Says AI Tokens Cost $10 Million in One Month

Peter Steinberger, creator of the OpenClaw AI agent platform, said he spent an estimated $10 million on tokens in a single month while running AI workloads. The claim was reported by TechRadar, whose article says the tokens were paid for by OpenAI investors.

Steinberger made the remark while speaking with Cloudflare CTO Dane Knecht at the Cloudflare Connect 2026 conference in San Francisco. Knecht described Steinberger as having “a virtually unlimited token budget” and said not all of that spending is useful.

Steinberger also argued that cloud infrastructure has not kept pace with AI needs, asking why AI workloads still run on a user’s computer instead of in the cloud. He predicted that people could eventually have AI systems that assist them throughout the day and anticipate what might help them.

He said users may need more than one agent: one to carry out work and another to check it and manage permissions. In his view, combining the two systems can increase trust, including by keeping an agent within guardrails. TechRadar noted that the spending claim could raise questions about OpenAI’s operations and investor perspective.