OpenClaw founder joins OpenAI

The founder of viral AI assistant OpenClaw, formerly known as Moltbot and Clawdbot, is now joining OpenAI. The recent, quick name change may have been a hint.

Developer Peter Steinberger made the announcement on his website on Friday (which happened to be Valentine's Day — hard launch?). He began by saying that the last month was a "whirlwind" due to the waves that Clawdbot/Moltbot/OpenClaw made, and many opportunities opened up to him.

While OpenClaw could become a huge company, Steinberger wrote, it's not exciting for him as a builder at heart. He "did the whole creating-a-company game already," he wrote, presumably talking about his document software company, Nutrient (formerly PSPDFKit).

So, he's onto his next mission: "to build an agent that even my mum can use."

"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 continued.

Steinberger noted that it's important to him that OpenClaw remain open source and hopes to make the project a foundation. OpenAI will sponsor OpenClaw and has made "strong commitments," but Steinberger didn't divulge what those commitments are.

The news comes at a time when OpenAI is retiring its popular, sycophantic GPT-4o and starting to test ads.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.