OpenAI has hired Peter Steinberger, the Austrian developer behind the viral open-source AI agent project OpenClaw, as the company deepens its work on systems that can act autonomously on a user’s behalf. The move, announced in mid-February 2026, pairs one of the most talked-about independent agent projects with a company racing to lead the market for personal AI agents.
What OpenClaw is
OpenClaw is a free, open-source personal AI agent that carries out tasks using large language models, with messaging apps as its main interface. Users run the software on their own hardware and connect it to services such as WhatsApp, Slack and iMessage, instructing it to manage email, calendars and other everyday tasks across their digital life. The project grew from a weekend experiment into one of the fastest-growing open-source efforts of its kind, gathering more than 100,000 stars on GitHub within roughly two months.
The project also changed names more than once in a short period. First published in late 2025, it was renamed to “Moltbot” in January 2026 following a trademark complaint from AI company Anthropic, whose assistant is named Claude, and shortly afterwards became “OpenClaw.” Steinberger has said the earlier name simply did not stick.
Why OpenAI wants the talent
The hire reflects how aggressively OpenAI is competing for engineering talent as it faces rivals including Anthropic and Google in the emerging market for autonomous agents. Announcing the move, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said Steinberger was joining “to drive the next generation of personal agents.” For Steinberger, joining OpenAI offers a route to reach the large user base of products such as ChatGPT.
Rather than folding OpenClaw directly into OpenAI, the two sides said the project would continue as an independent, open-source effort under a dedicated foundation, with OpenAI contributing to and helping fund its development. Altman framed open-source support as part of a broadly multi-agent future. Steinberger has spoken publicly, including in a long-form podcast interview, about the practical realities of running a fast-growing project, noting that hosting and operating costs ran to thousands of dollars a month and that the project was not profitable.
What to watch
Arrangements of this kind, where a company hires a prominent open-source maintainer while promising the project will stay independent, raise familiar questions. The credibility of an “independent foundation” depends on its governance, funding terms and how decisions are made once a major commercial backer is involved, and those details often become clear only over time. Personal agents that can act across a user’s email, messages and calendars also concentrate significant access and risk, so security, permissions and oversight matter as much as capability. Several specifics circulating about the project, including exact user counts and running costs, come from the founder or early reporting and are best treated as indicative rather than confirmed. The wider contest between OpenAI, Anthropic and Google for agent talent and adoption is likely to intensify; for context on the scale of investment involved, see coverage of Anthropic’s recent funding. Further reporting is available from CNBC and Steinberger’s own account of the deal.
