OpenClaw creator’s team burned $1.3M in OpenAI API tokens in 30 days running ~100 coding agents (Tom’s Hardware/The Decoder coverage of Steinberger’s dashboard screenshot, recent days; he now works at OpenAI).

Why It Matters

Concrete economics and behavior of real AI agent swarms in production software building—agents review PRs, hunt bugs, deduplicate issues, listen to meetings and open PRs autonomously. Distinct from covered “AI gets a Stripe account” piece; focuses on token burn scale, harnesses, and changed dev workflow for a tiny team. Artifact: the actual bill.

Evidence

Source evidence is in the linked daily scan.

Signal Read

Source Trail

Daily scan: 2026-05-18

• tomshardware.comhttps://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/openclaw-creator-burns-through-1-3-million-in-openai-api-tokens-in-a-single-month