Sam Altman hires OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger to build next-gen personal agents

In a significant move within the competitive landscape of artificial intelligence, OpenAI has announced the hiring of Peter Steinberger, the innovative creator behind OpenClaw, a prominent AI agent featured on the agent-exclusive social network Moltbook. OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, revealed this exciting development on Sunday via X, highlighting Steinberger's potential to shape the future of personal AI agents. Altman praised Steinberger as a visionary, stating, "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." He emphasized that the work Steinberger will undertake is expected to become integral to OpenAI's product offerings. Moreover, Altman confirmed that OpenClaw, which has undergone several name changes—including Moltbot and Clawdbot—will continue to thrive as an open-source initiative supported by OpenAI. "The future is going to be extremely multi-agent, and it's important to us to support open source as part of that," he remarked. Steinberger, who previously founded the PDF processing company PSPDFKit, returned from retirement to launch OpenClaw in late 2025. His insights are anticipated to inject fresh perspectives into OpenAI's ambition to create artificial general intelligence (AGI). During a Y Combinator podcast in February, he articulated his belief that AGI should function as a specialized form of intelligence, rather than a generalized one. "As a group, we specialize; as a larger society, we specialize even more," Steinberger noted, posing thought-provoking questions about the capabilities of individuals versus collaborative efforts in achieving significant technological milestones.