For $1.3 million a month, OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger runs 100 AI agents that code, review PRs, and find bugs

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For $1.3 million a month, OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger runs 100 AI agents that code, review PRs, and find bugs

Matthias Bastian

View the LinkedIn Profile of Matthias Bastian

May 16, 2026

Peter Steinberger, founder of the open-source project OpenClaw, shared how his team uses AI to build software.  His team of about three people, working at OpenAI, keeps roughly 100 Codex instances running in the cloud. They review PRs, find security holes in commits, deduplicate issues, and write fixes. Some agents open PRs based on the project's vision; others monitor benchmarks and report regressions in Discord. Agents even listen in on meetings and start PRs for features the team discusses. The team also uses Clawpatch.ai, Vercel's Deepsec, and Codex Security for bug and security analysis.

In 30 days, the OpenAI API bill hit $1.3 million for 603 billion tokens and 7.6 million requests. The top model was GPT-5.5, and OpenAI picks up the tab. Whether that's cheap or expensive depends on your perspective.

Steinberger via X<br>Steinberger defended the cost, saying he's exploring how software would be built if token costs didn't matter. Turning off "Fast Mode" alone, he says, would cut costs by 70 percent. Asked about ROI, he said everything his team builds is open source and works with leading models as well as open ones. "I'd say pretty high."Ad<br>DEC_D_Incontent-1

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