The creator of open-source AI agent platform OpenClaw has disclosed receiving acquisition offers from Meta and OpenAI. Peter Steinberger stated he would only agree to a deal if the project remains open source. The project is currently losing between $10,000 and $20,000 per month. Steinberger also revealed that crypto scammers launched sophisticated attacks during a rebranding effort, which he called the worst online harassment he’s experienced. He predicts AI agents like OpenClaw could eliminate 80% of current apps due to their versatility.
Peter Steinberger, the creator of the open-source AI agent platform OpenClaw, said he has received acquisition offers from Meta and OpenAI. He told Lex Fridman in a three-hour interview that his condition for any deal is that the project must stay open source.
Steinberger said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg contacted him via WhatsApp, and they debated AI models for ten minutes. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s pitch included a promise of computational power linked to a Cerebras partnership.
The project is currently losing between $10,000 and $20,000 monthly, with sponsorship money routed to dependencies. Steinberger, who previously sold a company, stated matter-of-factly, “Right now I lose money on this.”
A rebrand from Clawdbot prompted a trademark complaint from Anthropic and a subsequent rename to MoltBot. Crypto scammers then instantly hijacked his accounts, served malware from his GitHub, and spammed his Twitter mentions.
“I was close to crying,” Steinberger admitted about the coordinated attack. He said the second rebrand to OpenClaw required extreme secrecy to avoid another “crypto-scammer feeding frenzy.”
Steinberger rejects the term “vibe coding,” preferring “agentic engineering,” though he joked about switching styles late at night. He built much of the codebase by talking to AI, stating, “These hands are too precious for writing now.”
He predicts that OpenClaw-style agents will render 80% of current apps obsolete. “Every app is just a very slow API now, if they want it or not,” he told Fridman.
Steinberger has also spoken with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and is weighing options including starting his own company. He concluded, “I can’t go wrong.”
