OpenClaw Creator Joins OpenAI to Build Next-Gen AI Agents

Peter Steinberger, the creator of the open-source autonomous AI assistant OpenClaw, has joined OpenAI, the company confirmed in a statement on February 15. 

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, announced on X that Steinberger will help drive the development of next-generation personal AI agents as part of OpenAI’s broader multi-agent strategy. 

OpenAI will support OpenClaw as an open-source foundation going forward, preserving its independent ecosystem while bringing Steinberger into the fold. 

Steinberger, previously known for founding the software company PSPDFKit, launched OpenClaw (initially under different names) in late 2025. 

The project quickly went viral for its ability to handle tasks such as managing email, interacting with messaging platforms, and automating workflows—all through locally running autonomous agents. It amassed tens of thousands of stars on GitHub (~180,000) and attracted a significant developer following. 

In his blog post announcing the move, Steinberger said joining OpenAI gives him access to advanced research and infrastructure needed to realise his vision of making capable AI agents widely accessible.

“My next mission is to build an agent that even my mum can use,” he said. “I felt OpenAI was the best place to continue pushing on my vision and expand its reach. The more I talked with the people there, the clearer it became that we both share the same vision.”

When Steinberger first published the project in November 2025 under the name Clawdbot, Anthropic, the creator of the Claude AI models, sent the company notices over trademark concerns. Anthropic likely objected to the similarity between “Clawdbot” and “Claude,” prompting Steinberger to change the project’s name to Moltbot in January 2026. 

Shortly afterwards, he settled on the name OpenClaw, distancing the brand from the original dispute while preserving a thematic link to the project’s roots.

Only days before the corporate move, Steinberger said on the Lex Fridman Podcast that multiple major tech companies, including Meta and OpenAI, had made concrete offers. He emphasised that any deal had to preserve OpenClaw’s open-source status and community-driven nature.

With this move, Altman has confirmed that “OpenClaw will live in a foundation as an open source project that OpenAI will continue to support.”

On the other hand, users on social media expressed awe at how OpenClaw went from a solo project launched just a few months ago to becoming part of OpenAI, with some commentators framing it as a striking example of the “solo founder unicorn” narrative—one developer building something viral and then gaining opportunities at the frontier of the AI industry.

Several others also questioned Anthropic’s decision to push Clawdbot to rebrand rather than explore collaboration, suggesting it may have unnecessarily handed strategic ground to its biggest rival, OpenAI.