Peter Steinberger (피터 스타인버거), the creator of OpenClo, has disclosed records showing he used $1.3 million worth of OpenAI API tokens over the past 30 days, sparking controversy.

Business Insider reported on May 18 that Steinberger posted a screenshot on social media platform X on May 16 showing token spending by AI coding tool in a "Codex Bar" display. The screenshot put cumulative spending over the past 30 days at $1.3 million. Steinberger said he currently works at OpenAI, so he does not personally pay the cost. He said the token use was a benefit tied to supporting OpenAI OpenClo. Asked whether OpenAI actually bills the cost, he answered no.

The figure shows how large costs can become when AI is used intensively, and that free access to computing resources is emerging as an important condition in the competition to secure AI talent, Business Insider reported.

In Silicon Valley, a culture of showing off token usage has recently spread, and OpenAI is one of the companies that runs a competitive token-ranking system.

Reactions among X users were mixed. Some expressed shock that a single engineer's AI usage topped $1 million. Others said that level of spending could be used to pay the salary of a new engineer. Some users viewed the post as marketing that encourages other developers to use more tokens, Business Insider reported.

Steinberger said most of the spending was used to develop OpenClo.