OpenAI revealed how much its researchers spend on programming AI agents
OpenAI has published data on how actively its own researchers are using autonomous AI agents to write code.
OpenAI has published data on how actively its own researchers are using autonomous AI agents to write code.
According to the company, active users of the tool spend over $7,000 worth of tokens every day, Business Insider reports .
The company noted that over the past year, AI agents have dramatically changed its internal development processes. Its employees have begun to release code faster, conduct more experiments, and delegate tasks of increasingly higher complexity to algorithms.
As of mid-August 2026, the average OpenAI researcher was spending over $600 worth of tokens per day. In comparison, in July, this figure was $162. The top 10% of most active developers spend over $7,000 per day.
All amounts are based on standard OpenAI API retail rates, meaning they reflect the market value of the amount of data generated.
In addition to direct development, AI is increasingly being used to solve internal technical problems. The company reported that the number of daily calls to its internal technical support service has more than halved since January thanks to the use of AI agents to find and fix bugs.
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