OpenAI recently published data on its researchers’ coding-agent usage. We took their weekly figures from January to mid-August 2026 and fitted trends to summarize how quickly spending grew.
We found that spending has been doubling about once a month.
Quantifies how fast agentic coding consumption is growing: about $600 per day for a median OpenAI researcher by mid-August, over $7,000 at the 90th percentile. Useful for budgeting and for compute demand forecasts.
Terms in this piece · Glossary
AI agent — An AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.
