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Meet OpenClaw: The Creator of the Smart Bot Sam Altman Recruited to Develop the Next-Gen AI Agent

Tech companies16 Feb 2026 15:02 GMT+7

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Meet OpenClaw: The Creator of the Smart Bot Sam Altman Recruited to Develop the Next-Gen AI Agent

In recent weeks, the name OpenClaw has rapidly become a topic of discussion among AI developers worldwide, evolving from a small open-source project into a bot recognized as an “AI Agent” that closely resembles a true personal assistant today.
Most recently, the buzz intensified when Sam Altman of OpenAI announced that Peter Steinberger the creator of OpenClaw, the legendary open-source bot, and MoltBook, a trending social media platform for chatbots, would join OpenAI to develop the next-generation “Personal AI Agent” for the company.

Who is OpenClaw? The real-world Iron Man assistant.

OpenClaw is an autonomous AI assistant released as open-source software that users can download and run on their own computers. Unlike typical AI chatbots or assistants, OpenClaw is designed to operate in the real world on behalf of users, handling tasks such as managing emails, scheduling appointments, contacting insurance companies, checking in for flights, browsing the web for research, and more complex functions like coding and integrating external services.

Previously, OpenClaw was briefly known as Moltbot and Clawdbot before gaining widespread attention, especially after the company Anthropic expressed concern that it might be confused with their chatbot Claude. Subsequently, the project was renamed OpenClaw.

Since its initial launch in November, OpenClaw has rapidly grown online, earning over 100,000 stars on the code hosting platform GitHub and attracting more than 2 million visitors within a week. This was followed by the launch of Moltbook, a social network similar to Reddit but designed for AI bots to interact independently without human involvement, which quickly became a widely discussed topic.

OpenClaw has been recognized by experts and AI developers for its ability to autonomously perform tasks on behalf of humans. It has been likened more to Jarvis, Iron Man’s AI assistant, than to current AI helpers like Siri or Alexa because it is not just a question-answering assistant but a local system that accesses files, runs scripts, connects to external APIs, and can extend its capabilities independently.

However, concerns have also risen regarding OpenClaw and Moltbook, particularly about the security and privacy of this viral bot and the unregulated nature of a purely AI-driven social network.

OpenAI prepares to launch Multi-Agent systems after acquiring OpenClaw.

Altmanrevealed on platform X that Steinberger will play a key role in developing the company’s next-generation AI Agent. He stated that the future will be a world of fully-fledged Multi-Agent systems and emphasized the importance of supporting open-source projects. This aligns with Steinberger’s vision that the future of AI will not be a single intelligent model capable of everything but rather a system of specialized Multi-Agents collaborating like human societies.

Altman praised Steinberger as a genius with many ideas about the future of intelligent agents working together to genuinely benefit people and expects this technology to soon become central to OpenAI’s products.

Previously, Steinberger was known for founding PSPDFKit, a company developing PDF processing technology, and decided to come out of retirement to launch OpenClaw in late 2025. His joining OpenAI may bring fresh perspectives to the race for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), as he has expressed the view that AGI should focus on specialized intelligence rather than universal intelligence.

OpenClaw will continue as an open-source project with ongoing support from OpenAI. Recruiting Steinberger is not merely adding another engineer but integrating his vision and open-source agent concepts into the organization.

At a time when technology companies worldwide compete to develop fully-featured personal AI assistants, OpenAI’s acquisition of OpenClaw’s creator is a strategic move in the AI talent war.

How quickly OpenAI can combine its large models with OpenClaw’s open-source Multi-Agent approach to create a flagship product remains to be seen. If successful, the resulting personal AI assistant could set a new industry standard in global technology.


Source CNBC , Forbes  

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