OpenClaw Creator Peter Steinberger Joins OpenAI to Lead the Multi-Agent AI Future

Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw — the open-source personal AI assistant that amassed over 180,000 GitHub stars in record time — is joining OpenAI. Sam Altman announced the hire on February 15, calling Steinberger 'a genius with amazing ideas about the future of very smart agents interacting with each other.' The move is OpenAI's clearest signal yet that multi-agent AI is becoming a core product strategy.

1. OpenClaw: The Weekend Project That Conquered GitHub

Steinberger is an Austrian engineer who co-founded PSPDFKit in 2011 and sold it to Insight Partners for roughly 100 million euros in 2021. After three years away, he returned in late 2025 with a weekend side project: an open-source AI assistant that automates emails, calendars, and airline check-ins through WhatsApp and Telegram — all running locally on users' devices.

The project went through several names — WhatsApp Relay, Clawdbot, Moltbot — before becoming OpenClaw after Anthropic filed a trademark complaint over 'Clawdbot' sounding too much like 'Claude.' The controversy only fueled its rise. By February 2026, OpenClaw had crossed 180,000 GitHub stars, the fastest growth in the platform's history. Steinberger summed up his philosophy on the Lex Fridman Podcast: 'Every app is just a very slow API now.'

2. OpenAI's Play: Codex, Operator, and Now OpenClaw

Altman made the strategic vision explicit: 'The future is going to be extremely multi-agent and it's important to us to support open source as part of that.' With Codex handling code, Operator browsing the web, and now OpenClaw managing personal tasks, OpenAI is assembling a suite of specialized agents designed to work together autonomously.

Steinberger's one non-negotiable condition — that OpenClaw remain open source — was accepted. The project will transition to an independent foundation with continued OpenAI support. It's a notable move from a company often criticized for its open-source ambiguity, and it positions OpenAI against Anthropic, Google, and Apple in the rapidly heating agent ecosystem race.

Wrapping Up: The Multi-Agent Future Is No Longer Theoretical

Steinberger's move from indie open-source developer to OpenAI validates the personal AI agent as a strategic category, not a novelty. With OpenClaw preserved as open source and its creator now driving product development inside OpenAI, the multi-agent future Altman has been promising is beginning to take concrete shape. The synergy between OpenClaw's 180,000-strong community and OpenAI's infrastructure could accelerate the agent era faster than anyone expected.