Tal Saiag

Founder & CEO, stealth | Prev Co-Founder & CTO @ Granulate (Acquired by Intel) | Angel Investor

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

@raz_kaplan @OpenAI The throughput I am using would require much-much more $$
And both the frontier models are bearly managing as of right now - anything less capable would not work at all

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

Resolved, same day. Turned out to be a subscription edge case on my account colliding with the new Pro signup freeze. Not a ban, not a flag. Thanks to the @OpenAI team for moving so fast.

For everyone who said the numbers weren't real: ~$80k on OpenAI credits in the last 7 days, peaking at $27k/day. Another ~$80k on Anthropic since Sep 1. One person, one personal account per lab, one MacBook and no servers, every credit paid out of my own pocket, no company card, at the same rates anyone can get. Receipts below.

This is what building with agents looks like in 2026. What all this is building: soon.

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

I've been spending ~$20k/day out of my own pocket on GPT-6 Astra in Codex for the past week. One person, one personal Pro account, paying for every token, running long lived agentic dev loops around the clock.

This morning my one and only account was downgraded to Free with no email, no notice. Codex just stopped mid-task: `gpt-6-astra is not supported when using Codex with a ChatGPT account.` Billing is clean, not a renewal issue.

The new Pro account freeze means I can't even re-subscribe to get Astra back. @thsottiaux if an automated check flagged this I'll verify whatever you need. Just need a human on it. DM open 🙏

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

@JustinBleuel I am, thanks to the team - much appreciated!

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

I've been spending ~$20k/day out of my own pocket on GPT-6 Astra in Codex for the past week. One person, one personal Pro account, paying for every token, running long lived agentic dev loops around the clock.

This morning my one and only account was downgraded to Free with no email, no notice. Codex just stopped mid-task: `gpt-6-astra is not supported when using Codex with a ChatGPT account.` Billing is clean, not a renewal issue.

The new Pro account freeze means I can't even re-subscribe to get Astra back. @thsottiaux if an automated check flagged this I'll verify whatever you need. Just need a human on it. DM open 🙏

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

@ad_astra999 lol building something, not a dataset. Posting $80k of receipts with my name on them would be a pretty bad way to hide it.

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

Sorry, that's rough. Honestly, the visibility probably helped mine move faster, I won't pretend otherwise. But the root cause was account-specific, not a heavy-user thing, so yours may be different. If you still don't have a resolution, a ticket at https://t.co/ySRFS3GLff with the exact error and timestamp is the thing that gets a human, even if it's slow.

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

@MagaritaFatch Building something that would normally take a team of ten a quarter, and doing it alone in weeks. The tokens are the team. What it is: soon

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

@realrealcat Was. Working on fixing that, one token at a time.

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

@evadne Not API prices, that's the thing. ChatGPT Pro credits are 40% below API at volume, and Astra in Codex only runs through a ChatGPT account anyway. So the Pro route is both the cheaper one and the only one.

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

@sydsachar Not a typo. Receipts: https://t.co/ZhXGs8R95S

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

Resolved, same day. Turned out to be a subscription edge case on my account colliding with the new Pro signup freeze. Not a ban, not a flag. Thanks to the @OpenAI team for moving so fast.

For everyone who said the numbers weren't real: ~$80k on OpenAI credits in the last 7 days, peaking at $27k/day. Another ~$80k on Anthropic since Sep 1. One person, one personal account per lab, one MacBook and no servers, every credit paid out of my own pocket, no company card, at the same rates anyone can get. Receipts below.

This is what building with agents looks like in 2026. What all this is building: soon.

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

@nichtsalsdavid Receipts: https://t.co/ZhXGs8R95S
One MacBook, no servers, one account. Not 100 computers, just a lot of agents running in parallel. Turns out that's enough.

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

Resolved, same day. Turned out to be a subscription edge case on my account colliding with the new Pro signup freeze. Not a ban, not a flag. Thanks to the @OpenAI team for moving so fast.

For everyone who said the numbers weren't real: ~$80k on OpenAI credits in the last 7 days, peaking at $27k/day. Another ~$80k on Anthropic since Sep 1. One person, one personal account per lab, one MacBook and no servers, every credit paid out of my own pocket, no company card, at the same rates anyone can get. Receipts below.

This is what building with agents looks like in 2026. What all this is building: soon.

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

@aryanfindsaway Receipts: https://t.co/ZhXGs8R95S

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

Resolved, same day. Turned out to be a subscription edge case on my account colliding with the new Pro signup freeze. Not a ban, not a flag. Thanks to the @OpenAI team for moving so fast.

For everyone who said the numbers weren't real: ~$80k on OpenAI credits in the last 7 days, peaking at $27k/day. Another ~$80k on Anthropic since Sep 1. One person, one personal account per lab, one MacBook and no servers, every credit paid out of my own pocket, no company card, at the same rates anyone can get. Receipts below.

This is what building with agents looks like in 2026. What all this is building: soon.

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

@jacyang03 To be fair to them, mine wasn't treatment, it was an account-specific subscription bug that hit at the same time as the signup pause, and they fixed it the same day. Can't speak to the other issue.

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

@wayne_culbreth Fair skepticism, so: receipts. https://t.co/ZhXGs8R95S
It's ~$80k in the last 7 days, not $7.3M a year, the ramp is a week old. And no, nobody calls you. ChatGPT Pro sells Codex credits with auto-reload and you just keep buying them. Turns out that's the whole sales process.

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

Resolved, same day. Turned out to be a subscription edge case on my account colliding with the new Pro signup freeze. Not a ban, not a flag. Thanks to the @OpenAI team for moving so fast.

For everyone who said the numbers weren't real: ~$80k on OpenAI credits in the last 7 days, peaking at $27k/day. Another ~$80k on Anthropic since Sep 1. One person, one personal account per lab, one MacBook and no servers, every credit paid out of my own pocket, no company card, at the same rates anyone can get. Receipts below.

This is what building with agents looks like in 2026. What all this is building: soon.

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

@cryptonewstop25 Sorry, that's painful. Mine turned out to be an account-specific subscription issue, so yours may be a different cause. File a ticket at https://t.co/Wh7w7ekqul with the exact error and timestamp; a written record is what gets it escalated. Hope it's quick.

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

@catmanyau No usage signal. It was a subscription edge case on my account colliding with the new-signup pause, nothing to do with how much I was using. Recovery was the OpenAI team looking at it, fixed same day. Details in the quote post.

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

@dommcdev No, ChatGPT Pro credits with auto-reload, 40% off at volume (screenshot). All through Codex, and the $20k is after the discount.

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

@vit_alee @_orcaman They weren't. It was a subscription edge case on my account that collided with the new-signup pause, not a policy. OpenAI fixed it same day. Details in the quote post.

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

Not the API. ChatGPT Pro sells Codex credits directly, with auto-reload and 40% off at volume (screenshot). That's where the $20k/day went, and the number I posted is after the discount. Codex is my whole workflow, so there'd be no reason to use the API for this. And it wasn't ToS, it was a subscription edge case, details in the quote post.

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

@tregoudeau The $200 was never the issue. Astra needs Pro, Pro signups were frozen, so the $20k/day had nowhere to go. OpenAI sorted it same day, details in my quote post above.

[Tal Saiag @TalSaiag]

@sapere_vin33159 And the throughput that I’m using costs a lot more than what my spend would buy