A 21-year-old founder at Turbo AI, Sarthak Dhawan, did not intend to spend $30,000 on AI tokens in a single month, but the invoice arrived anyway. The median monthly spend on AI tokens sits at approximately $2,246, according to data from Ramp, making Dhawan's bill roughly 13 times that figure. Despite the unexpected bill, the New York-based founder argued that the $30,000 in token spend in April had produced data his team could not have obtained any other way. He stated, "I don't think of that month as a total mistake, though I've learned from it. That was a heavy shipping month, and the spend reflected that." Dhawan noted that "part of the reason our bill was so high was because I was working in fast mode in Claude without realizing it," adding that switching back to normal mode brought the costs down. For consumer-facing AI startups, inference costs can consume between 70% and 90% of a consumer AI startup's operating budget, according to Business Insider.