I don’t know if the journey is over for OpenClaw, but a new one begins for the creator of Clawdbot, renamed Moltbot, and finally as OpenClaw, the most popular AI agent. Peter Steinberger has been hired by OpenAI to become the head of the Personal Agents section of Sam Altman’s company.
Peter Steinberger He went from anonymity to a global star just a month ago, when he launched Clawdbot, an open source AI agent that can do everything with your PC…If you give him full control.
Despite the danger, thousands of people have started using it, becoming the AI star of the month. Anthropic, creators of the AI Claude, asked him to change the name (Clawd is pronounced almost like Claude), so he changed it to Moltbot, and later, to OpenClaw.
Peter Steinberger leaves for OpenAI: the consequences
a few minutes ago Sam Altman himself has announced the signing of Peter Steinbergerto take charge of its AI agents: «Peter Steinberger joins OpenAI to power the next generation of personal agents. He is a genius with incredible ideas about the future of intelligent agents that interact with each other to do very useful things for people. We expect this to quickly become a core element of our product offering.»
Peter Steinberger, for his part, says in his blog that: “I am joining OpenAI to work on bringing agents to the world.”
He says that he has received many offers from all the AI companies, and that he could have even started his own company with OpenClaw, but that is not what he wants. He aspires to much more.
«I want to change the world, not create a big company, and partnering with OpenAI is the fastest way to make this a reality for everyone. My next mission is to create an agent that even my mother can use. This will require a much broader change, much more thought about how to do it safely, and access to the latest models and research.»
And he concludes: “Personally, I am very excited to join OpenAI, be part of the forefront of AI research and development, and continue building with all of you.”
The big question everyone is asking now is: What is going to happen with OpenClaw?
The future of OpenClaw with OpenAI
Fortunately, OpenClaw It will not be absorbed by OpenAI, nor will it stop being open source. It is going to become a foundation, and will remain open and independent.
Here’s what Peter Steinberger says: «It has always been important to me that OpenClaw remains open source and has the freedom to thrive. Ultimately, I felt that OpenAI was the best place to continue driving my vision and expand its reach.
The community around OpenClaw is magical, and OpenAI is firmly committed to allowing me to spend time on it, and is already sponsoring the project.”
And he continues: «To give it a proper structure, I am working on turning it into a foundation. It will continue to be a place for thinkers, hackers and people who want a way to own their data, with the aim of supporting even more models and companies.»
Sam Altman himself gives his blessing: «OpenClaw will be sustained as an open source project that OpenAI will continue to support. The future will be extremely multi-agent, and it is important for us to support open source as part of that.»
Therefore After the signing of its creator to OpenAI, OpenClaw will continue. But we will see to what extent he will be able to focus on it, now that he has bosses in another job.