OpenClaw creator puts one month's AI token spending at about US$10 million
Peter Steinberger said not all of that usage was useful and described using a second AI agent to limit permissions.
Peter Steinberger, who created OpenClaw and now works at OpenAI, estimated spending about US$10 million on a single month's AI tokens, according to reporting by The Register's Thomas Claburn. He gave the estimate during an appearance at Cloudflare's Connect conference in San Francisco.
Speaking with Cloudflare chief technology officer Dane Knecht, Steinberger cautioned that some token consumption delivers no useful results. Tokens measure the text processed and produced by AI models and form the basis for companies' charges.
Steinberger pointed to infrastructure as a problem for agent users, questioning why their computers still handle tasks rather than cloud systems. He said decisions about an agent's data access depend in part on the model, and that lowering prompt-injection risks would not justify giving it unrestricted permissions.
His approach involves a separate agent that approves or denies permission requests. He said this negotiation often leads agents to abandon requests or choose simpler options that respect the restrictions, increasing his willingness to let them operate independently.
Cost was also central to his remarks at Y Combinator's Startup School in August. Asked about agents working continuously on their own, Steinberger said few people were prepared to pay for the token consumption involved.
