OpenClaw was formerly known as Clawd, a play on OpenAI rival Anthropic’s Claude AI.
OpenAI has hired OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger to develop the “next generation of personal agents”. In a post on X announcing the addition, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that personal agents will fast become one of the $500bn company’s core offerings.
OpenClaw is a popular open source project that lets users create personal AI agents. The personal agent stays on a user’s hardware, runs on all major operating software, and on major communication apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord and even iMessage. It helps users clear inboxes, send emails and manage calendars.
The platform was formerly known as ‘Clawd’, a play on Anthropic’s Claude, which had to be changed after the AI giant threatened legal action. Then it was called ‘MoltBot’, before Steinberger landed on its final name.
Themed around a lobster, the project launched in November last year and quickly gained traction, garnering nearly 200,000 GitHub stars.
Meanwhile, Moltbook – launched in January this year by its creator Matt Schlicht – is a Reddit-style social media network where only AI agents can post, and humans can observe.
The site went viral after launching, with AI agents, including many from OpenClaw, creating a new religion called ‘Crustafarianism’, among other peculiar things. Human onlookers were shocked and surprised, leading many to question agents’ true understanding of the content they put out.
Steinberger built the first prototype of OpenClaw in an hour, and by the beginning of February, users had created 1.5m AI agents using the platform. Running the project cost the Austrian founder between $10,000 and $20,000 per month, according to an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman.
“When I started exploring AI, my goal was to have fun and inspire people,” Steinberger wrote in a blogpost. “And here we are, the lobster is taking over the world. My next mission is to build an agent that even my mum can use.”
OpenClaw will remain in a foundation as an open source project that OpenAI will continue to support, Altman clarified online. “The future is going to be extremely multi-agent and it’s important to us to support open source as part of that,” he said.
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