OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI

4 hours ago 3

Terrence O'Brien

is the Verge’s weekend editor. He has over 18 years of experience, including 10 years as managing editor at Engadget.

Sam Altman announced on X that Peter Steinberger, the man behind the trendy AI agent OpenClaw, was joining OpenAI. He said that Steinberger has “a lot of amazing ideas” about getting AI agents to interact with each other, saying “the future is going to be extremely multi-agent.” He also said that this ability for agents to work together will “quickly become core to our product offerings.”

OpenClaw, previously known as Moltbot and Clawdbot, exploded on the scene earlier this year and became the darling of the tech world. Its rise was swift, but not without its bumps along the way. Earlier this month, researchers found over 400 malicious skills uploaded to ClawHub. It also launched MoltBook, a social network where AI agents went to complain about their humans, debate the provability of consciousness, and discuss the need for a private place to exchange ideas. And then it was immediately infiltrated by humans.

In a post on his personal site, Steinberger said that joining OpenAI would allow him to achieve his goal of bringing AI agents to the masses, without the headaches of running a company. He explained:

I could totally see how OpenClaw could become a huge company. And no, it’s not really exciting for me. I’m a builder at heart. I did the whole creating-a-company game already, poured 13 years of my life into it and learned a lot. 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.

For OpenAI, this is a high-profile hire after several big names were poached by Meta or left to form a rival. It also had a public falling-out with Elon Musk. Details of the deal aren’t public. It’s not clear how much Steinberger is getting paid or what his title might be. But Altman said that OpenClaw will continue as an open-source project in a foundation supported by OpenAI.

Update February 15th: Added statement from Peter Steinberger’s blog.

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