OpenAI’s researchers burned $7,000 a day on AI agents — now it’s opening the floodgates
The New Stack 1 month ago 37 ● 5 sources
OpenAI launched its Agents API in public beta, enabling developers to run AI agents unattended for tasks that last beyond a single context window and track jobs as they progress. The company reported that by mid-August its researchers logged 3.1 agent-workdays per human workday, with the median researcher spending over $600 per day on inference and the 90th percentile exceeding $7,000. As a result, agent usage is easier to scale while OpenAI simultaneously paused new sign-ups for its $200/month ChatGPT Pro plan to manage capacity strain around GPT-6 Astra.
