Sam Altman admits AI budgets are turning into a “huge issue,” with customers burning more tokens than even OpenAI’s top …
Rohan Paul Twitter · Rohan Paul (@rohanpaul_ai) · 2026-06-04
Sam Altman acknowledges AI token costs have become a major problem for customers, with one external OpenAI customer consuming 603 billion tokens per month — six times OpenAI's own heaviest internal user.
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Extraction
Topics: ai-coststoken-economicsopenaienterprise-ai
Claims
- AI budget costs are becoming a 'huge issue' for enterprise customers according to Sam Altman.
- OpenAI's heaviest internal user spends approximately 100 billion tokens per month.
- One external OpenAI customer consumed 603 billion tokens per month, far exceeding internal usage.
- Token consumption at scale creates cost challenges that even OpenAI did not anticipate.
Key quotes
Sam Altman admits AI budgets are turning into a 'huge issue,' with customers burning more tokens than even OpenAI's top in-house users.
Altman said OpenAI's top internal user spends about 100B tokens/month, while one outside customer hit 603B tokens/month.