OpenClaw Founder Joins OpenAI, Says AI Agent Will Remain Open-Source

OpenClaw (formerly known as Moltbot and Clawd) Founder Peter Steinberger has decided to join OpenAI. On Sunday, he announced his decision to join the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) giant, and it appears he will be building AI agents for the company. Despite the move, Steinberger stated that OpenClaw will remain open-source. In recent weeks, the AI agent grew in popularity due to the ease of setting it up and no cloud dependency. Many have built agentic workflows using the tool and shared them online.

OpenClaw Found Is Joining OpenAI

In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), the founder of OpenClaw announced his decision to join the AI giant. He added that the agentic tool will now “move to a foundation and stay open and independent.” In a blog post, he also revealed that he will be “joining OpenAI to work on bringing agents to everyone.”

Separately, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also posted about Steinberger joining the company, emphasising that he will work on the next generation of personal agents. Calling him a “genius with a lot of amazing ideas about the future,” he said personal AI agents will soon become core to the AI giant's product offerings. “The future is going to be extremely multi-agent and it's important to us to support open source as part of that,” he added.

Steinberger revealed that while OpenClaw could have become a successful company, he was not interested in starting a company. Calling himself “a builder at heart,” he said he wants to build AI agents that even someone who doesn't understand the tech can use. He also revealed that he spent last week talking to several AI companies; however, he chose OpenAI at the end. Some reports claimed that Steinberger was also considering Meta's Superintelligence Labs.

As for OpenClaw, the AI agent will remain accessible to the open community as it is currently. However, the offering will be managed by OpenAI's foundation. It will ensure that the code remains open and free for anyone to use, modify, or fork, preventing it from being turned into a closed proprietary product.