Did OpenAI acquire OpenClaw?

Yes. On February 15, 2026, Sam Altman announced OpenAI acquired OpenClaw (formerly Clawdbot/MoltBot) and that founder Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI to drive next-generation personal AI agents.

What happens to the OpenClaw project after the OpenAI acquisition?

OpenClaw moves to an independent foundation and remains open source. OpenAI committed to sponsoring the project financially and dedicating Steinberger's time to maintaining it.

How much did OpenAI pay to acquire OpenClaw?

The price was not disclosed. The acquisition is described as a talent acqui-hire — OpenAI acquired workflow infrastructure and community adoption, not a traditional company with paying customers.

Why did OpenAI buy OpenClaw?

OpenAI acquired workflow orchestration infrastructure and community adoption. OpenClaw's cross-platform agent orchestration (reading Google Sheets, composing Gmail, posting to Slack, scheduling calendar events) aligns with OpenAI's agent strategy.

How popular was OpenClaw when OpenAI acquired it?

At the time of acquisition, OpenClaw had ~196,000 GitHub stars and 2 million weekly users, making it one of the fastest-growing open source projects ever.

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OpenAI Acquires OpenClaw: Sam Altman Welcomes Peter Steinberger to Drive Next-Gen Personal Agents

On February 15, 2026, Sam Altman announced OpenAI acquired OpenClaw and that founder Peter Steinberger is joining to lead next-generation personal AI agents. OpenClaw moves to an independent foundation, remaining open source, with OpenAI sponsoring it. The project had 196K GitHub stars and 2M weekly users at time of acquisition.

Product Idea from this Signal

A web app that profiles your OpenClaw deployment, scores five lightweight alternatives on feature compatibility, and generates a step-by-step migration plan for the best match

70.5k ▲

OpenClaw's 434K-line codebase, 138+ CVEs, and breaking update cycle (v2026.3.2 disabled tools by default, v2026.4.5 saturated CPUs) push 30% of the community toward lighter alternatives. NanoBot (39K stars), Hermes (58K stars), NanoClaw, ZeroClaw, and PicoClaw each solve the weight problem differently. Existing migration tools target only one framework each. No tool helps operators compare their specific config (channels, skills, memory, cron jobs) against all alternatives simultaneously and pick the right escape path.

WEB-APPMIGRATIONDEVTOOLOPEN-SOURCE

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