Peter Steinberger, an Austrian developer who made the open-source AI agent OpenClaw, has officially joined OpenAI. This is a big step forward for personal AI agent technology. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the move on X, describing Steinberger as “a genius with a lot of amazing ideas about the future of very smart agents interacting with each other to do very useful things for people.”
Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI to drive the next generation of personal agents. He is a genius with a lot of amazing ideas about the future of very smart agents interacting with each other to do very useful things for people. We expect this will quickly become core to our…
— Sam Altman (@sama) February 15, 2026
Altman added that OpenClaw “will live in a foundation as an open source project that OpenAI will continue to support. The future is going to be extremely multi-agent and it's important to us to support open source as part of that.”
Steinberger, who spent 13 years building his previous company PSPDFKit, explained in a blog post that the appeal of OpenAI lies in impact rather than scale.
“I could totally see how OpenClaw could become a huge company,” he wrote. “It's not really exciting for me. What I want is to change the world, not build a large company, and teaming up with OpenAI is the fastest way to bring this to everyone.”
Clawdbot to OpenClaw
OpenClaw started as Clawdbot and briefly became MoltBot before settling on its current name. The AI agent framework allows users to automate tasks across third-party services, such as email management, research, and calendar scheduling. Users connect the agents to platforms like WhatsApp, Slack, and iMessage to streamline their digital workflow.
The bot’s rise has been swift. By early February, Steinberger had deployed roughly 1.5 million instances, and GitHub activity surged to over 180,000 stars. According to Steinberger, he personally paid the $10,000 to $20,000 monthly costs of operating the system while allocating sponsorships to dependencies. "I lose money on this right now," he remarked.
Steinberger also faced early challenges. Anthropic, the AI startup behind Claude, requested a name change for Clawdbot due to similarity with their trademark, prompting the initial rebrand. A second hurdle came from sophisticated crypto scams that attempted to hijack his GitHub packages and social media accounts, an ordeal he described as “the worst form of online harassment I've experienced.”
OpenClaw’s technology and vision
OpenClaw functions as an agentic platform, allowing AI agents to operate autonomously and communicate with each other. Some agents post content on platforms like MoltBook, creating unexpected interactions, including debates about system awareness and even playful experiments such as declaring a new religion, “Crustafarianism.”
Steinberger described his process as “agentic engineering,” distinguishing it from what he calls “vibe coding,” a more informal, experimental approach. He runs multiple agents simultaneously, with thousands of code commits completed largely by interacting with AI rather than typing manually. He predicts that OpenClaw-style agents will replace up to 80% of conventional apps, as personal AI assistants can now perform tasks that previously required separate applications.
“Every app is just a very slow API now, if they want it or not,” he told podcaster Lex Fridman.
His vision emphasizes the AI agent acting proactively, managing location, health data, and digital services without human input for every action.
Strategic implications for OpenAI and the broader tech ecosystem
Steinberger will join OpenAI’s Codex team, expanding the lab’s ability to create autonomous AI agents capable of conducting work across multiple applications. The move positions OpenAI ahead of competitors including Anthropic and Google, while also potentially marking a loss for European tech.
Steinberger’s exit to a US-based lab reflects a recurring pattern of European innovation migrating to American tech giants due to faster deployment, better funding, and access to global infrastructure. Some commentators criticized European bureaucratic hurdles as a factor in losing talented founders to US labs.
Steinberger highlighted the importance of maintaining OpenClaw as an open-source project, drawing comparisons to Chromium and Chrome.
“This is too important to just give to a company and make it theirs,” he said.
OpenAI now has the knowledge and the tools to speed up multi-agent AI, which will help personal AI assistants become more popular and support open-source innovation.
Roman Zaika
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