OpenClaw founder spent $10 million on AI tokens last month

by Maxwell Cooter

OpenClaw creator spent $10 million on AI tokens last month

Oct 23, 20262 mins

OpenClaw, the AI digital assistant, is looking to establish itself as an essential tool for users — but if it is as profligate in its use of tokens as its creator, Pete Steinberger, then users could be in for some huge usage bills.

Steinberger, now working for OpenAI, spent $10 million on AI tokens there last month, he told Cloudflare CEO Dane Knecht at the Cloudflare Connect 2026 Conference in San Francisco.

The conversation was reported by The Register, which noted Knecht’s remark that Steinberger had “a virtually unlimited token budget, which not all of us in the room have,” and Steinberger’s response, “What people don’t always understand is not all of that is useful.”

Steinberger went on to question the adequacy of companies’ infrastructure, musing, “Why is this still using my computer? Shouldn’t this all be in the cloud?”

Adding cloud costs into the equation, as well as shoving privacy issues to one side would not reassure the audience.

This was scarcely a conversation to reassure those CFOs who were getting palpitations about the real cost of AI tokens, whether this was the best way to introduce AI into the system and whether there are better ways of managing costs. However, such dizzying heights of spending may be music to the ears of Steinberger’s employer as it prepares for its upcoming IPO.

This article first appeared on InfoWorld.

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