OpenClaw creator resists buyout pressure

OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger said he has received acquisition offers from Meta and OpenAI following the rapid rise of his open-source AI agent platform.

The project, which surpassed 180,000 GitHub stars in record time and previously operated under the name Clawdbot, has become one of the fastest-growing autonomous agent ecosystems online.

“My conditions are that the project stays open source,”

Steinberger said in an interview with Lex Fridman Podcast, adding:

“I think this is too important to just give to a company and make it theirs.”

Steinberger disclosed that Mark Zuckerberg contacted him directly via WhatsApp, while Sam Altman offered access to additional computational resources tied to a Cerebras partnership that could accelerate agent performance.

Despite the attention, Steinberger said the project is currently losing between $10,000 and $20,000 per month, with sponsorship funds redirected to dependencies rather than personal income.

The platform also endured a major security and branding crisis after a trademark complaint from Anthropic prompted a rename, which crypto scammers exploited by hijacking accounts and distributing malware through compromised repositories.

Steinberger now faces a choice between accepting corporate backing, launching a venture-backed company, or continuing to self-fund development, while predicting that AI agents like OpenClaw could eventually replace up to 80% of existing software applications.