OpenAI Snags OpenClaw Creator for Agent Push

Steinberger to Lead AI Giant's Multi-Agent Development Team Rashmi Ramesh (rashmiramesh_) • February 16, 2026

Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI to lead development of personal agents, culminating weeks of viral attention paid to his OpenClaw open-source artificial intelligence assistant project.

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OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said Steinberger will drive the next generation of personal agents at the company. "He is 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. We expect this will quickly become core to our product offerings," Altman posted on X, formerly Twitter.

The agreement caps a turbulent period for OpenClaw, which allows users to automate tasks through messaging apps by providing the bot with their service credentials. The bot, previously known as Clawdbot ...