OpenAI researchers burn over $7k in AI coding tokens daily

OpenAI has revealed how much its researchers use AI coding agents. According to a company blog post, the heaviest users now burn through over $7,000 worth of tokens daily. Tokens are basic units AI models use to process text, and these figures are estimated at public API prices, not actual costs.

Over the past year, AI coding agents have changed how OpenAI researchers work. They write and ship code faster, run more experiments, and hand off increasingly complex tasks. By mid-August, the median researcher used over $600 in tokens per day, up from $162 in July. Agents also help troubleshoot issues, cutting daily posts on the internal tech support channel by more than half since January.

OpenAI says it has met CEO Sam Altman's goal of an "automated research intern" and plans a fully automated AI researcher by March 2028. But rising token costs worry the industry. Meta and Amazon have shut down internal token leaderboards, urging employees not to use AI just for the sake of it.