OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger has announced he is joining OpenAI to lead development of its next-generation personal agents, with the open-source project transitioning to an independent foundation. The hire, confirmed by Sam Altman, follows OpenClaw's rapid rise from a November 2025 side project into one of the most widely adopted autonomous AI agents, combining tool access, code execution, persistent memory and messaging integration. Anthropic's decision to send a cease-and-desist over the project's original "ClawdBot" name effectively pushed Steinberger toward its rival, while LangChain CEO Harrison Chase noted the agent's success stemmed from its willingness to operate without enterprise-grade guardrails.

OpenAI's acquisition of OpenClaw signals the beginning of the end of the ChatGPT era - VentureBeat