OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced on Sunday that Peter Steinberger, the creator of the viral AI agent OpenClaw, is joining the company. Altman added that the service will continue to operate under a foundation as an open-source project, with ongoing support from OpenAI.
Previously known as Clawdbot and Moltbot, OpenClaw was introduced last month by Steinberger. The AI agent quickly gained traction, fueled in part by social media attention, as both consumers and businesses increasingly adopt tools capable of autonomously completing tasks, making decisions, and taking actions with minimal human intervention.
In a post on X, Altman stated that Steinberger is “joining OpenAI to drive the next generation of personal agents.” He described him as “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,” adding that such technology is expected to become central to OpenAI’s product lineup.
While financial details of the move were not disclosed, AI firms—including OpenAI—have been aggressively investing to attract top talent. In May, OpenAI acquired io, the AI hardware startup founded by former Apple designer Jony Ive, for more than $6 billion. Meanwhile, Meta and Google have also committed billions of dollars to recruit leading AI developers and researchers.
OpenAI, recently valued at $500 billion and aiming to increase that figure further, faces strong competition in the generative AI sector—particularly from Google and Anthropic. Anthropic’s AI models are increasingly being adopted by enterprises to handle a growing range of business functions.
Anthropic’s Claude model has recently gained significant momentum, especially with the release of Claude Code. The company also launched Claude Opus 4.6, which it says delivers improved coding performance, longer task continuity, and higher-quality professional outputs. Earlier this week, Anthropic closed a fundraising round that valued the company at $380 billion.
OpenClaw has seen rapid adoption in China, where it can integrate with locally developed language models such as DeepSeek and be configured to work with Chinese messaging platforms through customised setups. Chinese search engine Baidu plans to provide users of its primary smartphone app with direct access to OpenClaw, according to a company spokesperson speaking to CNBC.
However, some researchers have raised concerns about OpenClaw’s open-source nature, warning that the ability for users to extensively modify the system could potentially create cybersecurity risks.