OpenClaw creator says he used $10 million in AI tokens in one month

OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger says he used an estimated $10 million worth of AI tokens in a single month at OpenAI. Speaking with Cloudflare’s Dane Knecht at Cloudflare Connect 2026 in San Francisco, he also described a future in which agents run in the cloud and check one another’s actions.

The figure is Steinberger’s own estimate, not an independently verified bill. His work provides relevant context: TechRadar says he has been working with OpenAI on next-generation personal AI agents since February 2026.

a virtually unlimited token budget, which not all of us in the room have

Dane Knecht, describing Steinberger’s access during the conversation

A personal agent without the personal computer

Steinberger argued that the infrastructure supporting AI has not caught up with what he wants agents to do. His complaint was concrete: why should the work still depend on his computer rather than happen in the cloud? He framed better cloud infrastructure as part of making agents more useful, rather than simply asking for a more capable assistant.

His longer-term vision goes beyond answering a request. He expects people to have intelligence that runs throughout the day, thinks about their needs and may anticipate something helpful. In that vision, an answer could arrive before the person asks the question. That is Steinberger’s expectation for how agents might develop, not a capability announced at the conference.

Another agent holds the permission

Steinberger also described how he becomes comfortable giving an agent more freedom. Rather than relying on one agent to both perform a task and decide whether its actions are acceptable, he favors a second agent that can grant or withhold permission. The agent doing the work must negotiate with the other system.

He said those exchanges sometimes lead the working agent to reconsider an action or find a simpler approach that stays within its guardrails. The second agent is therefore not just checking a finished answer in his description; it can influence whether and how the work proceeds. Steinberger said combining the two systems substantially increases his trust in letting the agent act freely.