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Sam Altman’s Acqui-Hire of OpenClaw’s Peter Steinberger May Define ChatGPT’s Future

The OpenClaw founder moves to work with Sam Altman as OpenAI shifts from chatbots to always-on personal agents.

OpenAI’s latest acqui-hire puts Peter Steinberger, the creator of the open-source A.I. agent OpenClaw, at the center of the fast-moving stage of agentic A.I. The A.I. powerhouse has hired Steinberger to lead its personal agents division, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced on X on Feb. 15, praising 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.”

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Steinberger’s creation has taken the developer world by storm in recent weeks for its ability to turn a large language model into something that doesn’t just chat with users, but acts on their behalf—fitting seamlessly into their daily routines.

Unlike typical software-as-a-service A.I. agents, OpenClaw lets users interact through their preferred messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, while it runs tasks in the background. The agent can send emails, check users in for flights, respond to messages and add events to calendars. It can also execute more complex commands like running scripts or modifying files, making it a favorite among developers. Because it is designed to be always on, many users run it 24/7 on a Mac Mini, which operates quietly, consumes little power and doesn’t overheat.

Steinberger, 39 or 40, is an Austrian developer who studied at the Vienna University of Technology and briefly worked at the digital document library Scribd. In 2011, he founded a PDF software development kit called PSPDFKit (now Nutrient SDK). A decade later, he launched an investment consortium, Founders of Europe. By November 2025, he was inspired to build an early version of OpenClaw, then known as Clawdbot.

In a blog post, Steinberger said OpenAI “already sponsors the project,” adding that he and Altman share a vision for open-source A.I. (although OpenAI’s flagship GPT models are not open-source.) “It’s always been important to me that OpenClaw stays open source and given the freedom to flourish…The more I talked with the people [at OpenAI], the clearer it became that we both share the same vision.”

Altman framed the acqui-hire as part of OpenAI’s push to make A.I. agents “core” to its offerings—suggesting that traditional chat interfaces like ChatGPT may soon give way to more autonomous systems.

“The 400 million ChatGPT users don’t need more reasoning in the chat window—they need someone to clear their inbox,” Collin Hogue-Spears, senior director at open-source security company Black Duck Software, told Observer.

Meta, known for its open-source A.I. models, was also reportedly interested in acquiring OpenClaw. But the company recently banned the technology for employees, citing privacy risks. 

It remains unclear whether other OpenClaw team members will join OpenAI. In a blog post, Steinberger said OpenAI intends to keep OpenClaw as an independent foundation.

OpenClaw was originally built to enhance Anthropic’s Claude (hence its early name, Clawdbot). But because of significant security risks associated with the technology, including broad system access and limited safeguards, Anthropic filed a cease-and-desist order in late January requiring Steinberger to change the name, he said on X.

Some see Anthropic’s move as a misstep that effectively pushed Steinberger toward a competitor. Others argue the concerns were justified. OpenClaw carries real security risks, cybersecurity experts warn.

“There have been numerous reports of leaks where researchers found exposed API keys, transcripts of conversations, and plaintext user passwords,” Zbyněk Sopuch, chief technology officer at data security firm Safetica, told Observer. “While most of these have been patched, new ones can easily crop up due to the complex nature of agent models.”

Whether OpenClaw continues operating under OpenAI’s umbrella remains an open question. OpenAI has largely staked its business on broad consumer adoption. “Until they get OpenClaw features integrated into ChatGPT and start pushing widespread adoption, acqui-hiring the creator of an open-source project that is only popular amongst a small number of developers is not going to move the needle for them,” Douglas Mill, founder at A.I. document reader Biblion AI, told Observer.

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