OpenAI is doubling down on personal AI agents — and it just hired one of the internet’s most unexpected breakout builders to help lead the charge.
Peter Steinberger, creator of the open-source project OpenClaw, announces he is joining OpenAI to “work on bringing agents to everyone,” marking a strategic bet on multi-agent systems becoming central to how people interact with AI.
Steinberger says the decision followed weeks of conversations with major AI labs and access to cutting-edge, unreleased research.
“My next mission is to build an agent that even my mum can use. That’ll need a much broader change, a lot more thought on how to do it safely, and access to the very latest models and research.”
He adds that while OpenClaw could have been turned into a company, that path did not interest him.
“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.”
OpenClaw will not be absorbed into OpenAI as a proprietary product. Instead, Steinberger says it will move into a foundation structure and remain open source, with OpenAI supporting the project.
“It’s always been important to me that OpenClaw stays open source and given the freedom to flourish.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirms the hire, saying it is a major step toward the next phase of AI products.
“Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI to drive the next generation of personal agents. 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 also emphasizes that OpenClaw will continue independently as an open-source project.
“OpenClaw will live in a foundation as an open-source project that OpenAI will continue to support. The future is going to be extremely multi-agent, and it’s important to us to support open source as part of that.”
The move signals OpenAI’s intent to push beyond chat interfaces toward networks of AI agents that can act, coordinate, and transact on behalf of users — a shift that could define the next wave of consumer AI.
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