Quick Facts
- OpenClaw gained 157,000 GitHub stars in three weeks during February 2026, becoming the most significant AI repository of early 2026
- Multiple tech CEOs courted Steinberger, including personal calls from Sam Altman and Satya Nadella, plus WhatsApp messages from Mark Zuckerberg
- OpenClaw will remain open source under a foundation structure while Steinberger joins OpenAI to drive their next-generation personal agents strategy
OpenAI hired OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger to lead development of autonomous agents after his open-source project exploded in popularity. The ChatGPT maker announced the hire on February 15, 2026.
Steinberger’s OpenClaw project gained more than 157,000 stars on GitHub in just three weeks during February 2026. The project attracted 2 million visitors in a single week and became the most significant AI repository of early 2026.
Sam Altman personally recruited Steinberger after weeks of competition from other tech giants. “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,” Altman said. “We expect this will quickly become core to our product offerings.”
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called Steinberger directly, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reached out via WhatsApp and tested OpenClaw himself. Steinberger chose OpenAI because they agreed to keep the project open source.
“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,” Steinberger said. OpenClaw will continue as an open-source project under a foundation structure with OpenAI’s support.
The hiring comes as OpenAI faces increased competition in the enterprise market. The company’s enterprise market share dropped from 50% in 2023 to 27% by end of 2025, while Anthropic now holds 40% of the enterprise market.
Steinberger previously founded PSPDFKit, a PDF development toolkit used by Apple, Dropbox, and SAP. He bootstrapped the company for a decade before Insight Partners invested $116 million in 2021.
OpenAI launched its Frontier enterprise agent platform one week before announcing Steinberger’s hire. The timing signals an acceleration of OpenAI’s agent ambitions as the company competes with rivals developing autonomous AI systems.
Security researchers identified over 135,000 internet-facing OpenClaw instances, with roughly 12% of the skill registry compromised by malicious actors. The rapid deployment highlights both the project’s popularity and the challenges of securing open-source AI agent frameworks.
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