"Lot Of Amazing Ideas": Peter Steinberger, OpenClaw's Creator, Joins OpenAI

Austrian software developer Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw, an open‑source AI agent framework, is set to join OpenAI. CEO Sam Altman announced the news on X on Monday, writing, “Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI to drive the next generation of personal agents.” Altman described Steinberger as “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.”

The announcement got a viral response online. An X user commented, “One guy, coding alone at 5 am, built the fastest-growing GitHub repo in history. 194,000 stars. Faster than React, Linux, and Kubernetes combined. OpenAI, with thousands of engineers and billions in computers, couldn't build it first. Steinberger connected Claude's API to WhatsApp in an hour one night in November 2025. He called it a toy. Three months later, Meta's [Mark] Zuckerberg is DMing him on WhatsApp and [Sam] Altman is offering Cerebras compute to win him over.”

One guy, coding alone at 5am, built the fastest-growing GitHub repo in history. 194,000 stars. Faster than React, Linux, and Kubernetes combined.

OpenAI, with thousands of engineers and billions in compute, couldn't build it first. Steinberger connected Claude's API to WhatsApp… https://t.co/zPVkkV43zD

— Aakash Gupta (@aakashgupta) February 15, 2026

Peter Steinberger And OpenClaw

Steinberger first released the framework in November 2025 under earlier names such as Clawdbot and Moltbot. The software allows users to run autonomous AI agents capable of performing real-world tasks, from managing emails and calendars to integrating with messaging apps like WhatsApp, Slack, and Telegram, without requiring deep technical skills.

In just weeks, OpenClaw saw astonishing adoption. Tens of thousands of stars on GitHub, with metrics suggesting over 100,000 stars, making it one of the fastest-growing open-source repositories in recent history. Millions of visitors exploring or installing the project in a single week.

“The math tells the whole story,” the viral post read. “Steinberger was spending $10,000-$20,000 a month of his own money, operating at a loss, routing sponsorship dollars to dependencies instead of his own pocket. OpenAI spent $13 billion of Microsoft's money. And the solo dev's agent framework went more viral than anything OpenAI shipped.”

OpenAI has reaffirmed that OpenClaw will continue as an open-source project, housed in a foundation that OpenAI will support.

Peter Steinberger's Works

“Sam calling him ‘a genius with a lot of amazing ideas' is doing a lot of heavy lifting. This is an acqui-hire of a project that proved OpenAI's biggest vulnerability: the agent layer doesn't need to be built by the model provider. Any developer with an API key and a messaging app could build a more compelling agent experience than the companies training the models. Steinberger proved it,” the post read.

According to the viral post, before joining OpenAI, Peter Steinberger had previously sold his company, PSPDFKit, for over $100 million. After that exit, he spent three years travelling and exploring development, including ayahuasca retreats.

Upon returning to the tech scene, Steinberger attempted multiple ventures, reportedly working on 43 different projects that did not succeed. On his 44th project, he created OpenClaw, now regarded as a major open-source AI agent framework.

“OpenAI hired the guy who proved you don't need $10B to build the agent future. You just need to ship faster than the committee can approve a product spec,” the post added.