BroadChain has learned that on March 9, Peter Steinberger, founder of OpenClaw (widely known online as "Lobster"), confirmed he has joined OpenAI. His role will be to assist OpenAI developers in expanding their product portfolio, with a primary focus on building the next-generation personal AI Agent.
Steinberger's entrepreneurial history is already legendary. In 2011, as an experienced iOS developer, he launched PSPDFKit as a personal project. Leveraging its PDF-processing SDK technology, the venture quickly became profitable and grew over a decade into a global business serving tech giants like Apple and Adobe. In 2021, he sold the majority of his stake for approximately €100 million and announced his retirement—only to be met with a sense of emptiness and existential迷茫. The subsequent AI wave provided a new direction.
In June 2025, Steinberger made his comeback, founding Amantus Machina to ride the industry trend dubbed "The Year of AI Agents." He developed and launched the AI agent Clawdbot (later renamed Moltbot and then OpenClaw following trademark disputes). Remarkably, the entire project was built using AI tools—Steinberger did not write a single line of code himself. With core advantages like local deployment, proactive execution, and permanent memory, the project became a phenomenon in 2026, amassing over 280,000 stars on GitHub.
Steinberger's move to OpenAI marks a new chapter—the "present life"—of his AI Agent entrepreneurial journey.
OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman personally announced the appointment, highlighting Steinberger's product expertise in the AI Agent domain as a key asset. OpenAI's existing Agent products face challenges such as poor usability and limited local execution capabilities—weaknesses that OpenClaw's technical strengths are well-positioned to address.
Notably, following Steinberger's move, OpenClaw will continue to operate as an independent, non-profit open-source foundation, with ongoing sponsorship from OpenAI. Steinberger himself will remain an advisor to OpenClaw.
His core mission at OpenAI is to "build an Agent even my mother can use." He aims to help OpenAI fill gaps in its product lineup, capture market share in both personal and enterprise-level Agent sectors, and further intensify competition in Silicon Valley's AI Agent赛道.