OpenAI hires OpenClaw’s Peter Steinberger
Peter Steinberger, the creator of the AI personal assistant OpenClaw, has joined OpenAI. The product, originally named Clawdbot and later Moltbot, gained viral popularity by promising to be the “AI that actually does things,” such as managing calendars, booking flights, and joining a social network of AI assistants. The name changed after Anthropic threatened legal action over its similarity to “Claude” and again because Steinberger preferred the new name.
In a blog post, the Austrian developer explained his decision to forgo building a standalone company. Steinberger stated that while he could have turned OpenClaw into a large business, he found the prospect unexciting. He expressed a desire to “change the world” and identified teaming up with OpenAI as the fastest path to bringing his vision to a broad audience. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced on X that Steinberger will “drive the next generation of personal agents” in his new role.
Regarding the future of the OpenClaw product itself, Altman specified that it will become an open source project housed in a foundation. OpenAI will continue to provide support for the project even as Steinberger moves to the company. This transition allows the assistant’s technology to remain accessible to the public while its creator focuses on developing next-generation personal agents within OpenAI.
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