Not long ago, was experimenting with a side project that quickly caught fire across the developer world. His open-source AI assistant, OpenClaw, wasn't just another chatbot; it could on your behalf, from managing emails to integrating with calendars and messaging platforms.
Today, that project has a new chapter: Steinberger is joining OpenAI to help build the next generation of personal AI agents.
This move isn't just about talent acquisition. It marks a switch in how the AI industry thinks about assistants: from reactive systems you talk to, toward agents that take initiative and perform tasks autonomously, with potential implications for productivity, workflows, and personal automation.
OpenClaw first emerged in late 2025 under names like and . What distinguished it was not fancy visuals or marketing, but its practical ambition: give users an AI that connects to their tools and executes workflows, booking flights, sorting messages, scheduling meetings, in ways that feel closer to than .
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It quickly went viral on GitHub, drawing more than 100,000 stars and millions of visits to its project page within weeks.
Rather than turning OpenClaw into a standalone company, Steinberger chose to partner with OpenAI, a decision he explained in a blog post as driven by a simple goal: .
According to him, OpenAI's infrastructure, research resources, and product ecosystem offered the best path to scale such an ambitious idea.
OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman welcomed Steinberger's move as strategic, underscoring that the company expects , systems capable of initiating, coordinating, and completing tasks across apps, to be an important part of future AI products.
Altman's public post noted that OpenClaw will continue to exist as an open-source project under a new foundation supported by OpenAI, preserving its accessibility and community roots.
The notion of AI that things has been bubbling under the surface of tech discourse, but OpenClaw's popularity crystallised it. Users interact with their agents through familiar interfaces like messaging platforms, but behind the scenes, these agents orchestrate API calls, automate scripts, handle notifications, and adapt to changing schedules, all without explicit commands after initial setup.
This trajectory, from an experimental open-source project to a central piece of a major AI lab's strategy, speaks to broader trends in the industry. Competitors from Anthropic to Google DeepMind have also indicated interest in multi-agent systems and autonomous workflows, but OpenAI's move signals how seriously the category is now being taken.
It suggests a future where AI isn't just conversational, but and tightly integrated into everyday tooling.
At the same time, this evolution raises fresh questions about governance and safety. OpenClaw's open-source nature meant that developers could experiment freely, but that freedom also exposed potential attack surfaces; misconfigured agents with access to sensitive accounts or automation processes could be exploited if not properly safeguarded.
That is one reason why maintaining an open foundation with careful oversight matters as these tools scale.
For OpenAI, Steinberger's arrival embeds this agent-first thinking into its product roadmap at a critical moment. The company is already exploring “multi-agent” architectures, where specialised AIs coordinate with each other and with users to handle complex tasks more effectively than monolithic models alone. Steinberger brings an experimental sensibility and real-world experience that could accelerate those efforts.
This could mean future versions of ChatGPT or other OpenAI products will be able to , rather than waiting for you to prompt them. That shift, from conversational replies to autonomous action, is the next frontier in how AI will .
And with OpenClaw's creator now inside one of the most influential AI labs in the world, that future feels closer than ever.