In a significant strategic move within the artificial intelligence sector, OpenAI has hired Peter Steinberger, the Austrian developer behind the viral personal AI assistant OpenClaw. The announcement was made on February 15, 2026, by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who stated Steinberger will lead the development of the next generation of personal agents for the company.
Steinberger's project, OpenClaw, distinguished itself from conversational AI models like ChatGPT by demonstrating an unprecedented ability to autonomously execute real-world digital tasks. These tasks included managing calendars, booking travel, and interacting with other AI systems. The assistant, previously known as Clawdbot and Moltbot, gained rapid traction in late 2025 and early 2026, particularly in markets like China where it was integrated with local models such as DeepSeek.
Altman praised Steinberger as a "genius" with "amazing ideas about the future of very smart agents," and expects this work to "quickly become core to our product offerings." Steinberger explained his decision to join OpenAI rather than scale his own company, stating, "What I want is to change the world, not build a large company, and teaming up with OpenAI is the fastest way to bring this to everyone."
The OpenClaw service itself will remain as an open-source project supported through an external foundation, a model OpenAI will continue to back. This move is seen as a major talent acquisition in the intensifying race for "agentic" AI—systems designed to make decisions and take actions without constant human input. The hiring follows OpenAI's recent acquisition of Jony Ive's AI devices startup for over $6 billion and occurs against a backdrop of fierce competition with rivals like Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, and Meta.
Anthropic, valued at $380 billion in a recent funding round, had previously initiated legal action over the original "Clawdbot" name, prompting the first rebrand. While OpenClaw's capabilities have driven its popularity, some researchers have raised concerns about potential cybersecurity risks due to its highly customizable and open nature.
