OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger joins OpenAI to advance personal AI agents

OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI. Taking to X, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that with this, the open-source AI bot was becoming a foundation.

Altman further stated that Steinberger’s joining OpenAI will prove to be a major boost for the next generation of personal agents.

“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 product offerings,” stated Altman.

What is OpenClaw?

Earlier known as Clawdbot or Moltbot, OpenClaw is an AI assistant that can manage emails, tackle insurer as well perform check-ins for flight,s along with several other tasks.

OpenClaw had a meteoric rise in popularity since its introduction in November. It received over 100,000 stars on code repository ⁠GitHub and registered over 2 million visitors in one week, stated Steinberger in a blog post.

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“It’s always been important to me that OpenClaw stays open source and ⁠given the freedom to flourish. Ultimately, I felt OpenAI was the best place to continue pushing ⁠on my vision and expand its reach,” Steinberger stated in a blog post on Sunday, reported the Indian Express.

“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.”

OpenAI’s automation ambition

OpenAI remains best known for ChatGPT and its line-up of AI systems, including GPT 5.2, along with newer efforts such as its coding app Codex. Even so, the company has yet to match the kind of hands-on personal task automation that OpenClaw built its reputation on.

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Altman has signalled that this gap is about to narrow. Personal agents, he suggested, are set to become a central focus. “We expect this will quickly become core to our product offerings,” he added.

In a blog post, Steinberger made it clear that scaling a corporate empire was never the ambition. His priority, he wrote, was continuing to build. “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,” he said.

What will happen to OpenClaw?

Steinberger indicated that discussions with OpenAI reinforced his decision. The alignment, he suggested, went beyond a hiring move. “The more I talked with the people there, the clearer it became that we both share the same vision,” he added.

For OpenClaw users, the announcement could prompt questions about the project’s direction. Altman has sought to calm that concern, saying the software will transition into an open-source foundation backed by OpenAI rather than be folded directly into its core products.

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“The future is going to be extremely multi-agent, and it's important to us to support open source as part of that,” stated Altman.

Steinberger, for his part, has maintained that OpenClaw will remain “open and independent.”