OpenClaw Creator Peter Steinberger Joins OpenAI to Build Agents for Everyone

In a personal post published today, Peter Steinberger announced he is joining OpenAI to work on bringing agents to everyone—while ensuring OpenClaw remains open and independent through a new foundation structure.

The Vision

“My next mission is to build an agent that even my mum can use,” Steinberger wrote. “That’ll need a much broader change, a lot more thought on how to do it safely, and access to the very latest models and research.”

After conversations with major AI labs and getting access to unreleased research, Steinberger concluded OpenAI was the best path forward: “The more I talked with the people there, the clearer it became that we both share the same vision.”

OpenClaw’s Future

Despite the move, Steinberger emphasized OpenClaw will stay open source. “It’s always been important to me that OpenClaw stays open source and given the freedom to flourish.” He’s working on establishing it as a foundation “for thinkers, hackers and people that want a way to own their data.”

OpenAI has already committed to sponsoring the project and enabling Steinberger to dedicate time to it.

Background

Steinberger built OpenClaw as a playground project that quickly went viral. The project accumulated 250K+ GitHub stars in under four months and inspired a global community of users and contributors. Fast Company named him to its AI 20 for 2026.

Read the full post at steipete.me.