OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has announced that Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw, is joining the company. OpenClaw, earlier known as Clawbot and Moltbot, was launched in November 2025. It is an open agent AI platform that runs on your machine and works from the chat apps you already use, the official website said.
In a post on X, Steinberger wrote, “I'm joining @OpenAI to bring agents to everyone. @OpenClaw is becoming a foundation: open, independent, and just getting started.”
I'm joining @OpenAI to bring agents to everyone. @OpenClaw is becoming a foundation: open, independent, and just getting started.????https://t.co/XOc7X4jOxq
— Peter Steinberger ???? (@steipete) February 15, 2026
So, who is Peter Steinberger? Let's find out.
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Who Is Peter Steinberger?
Peter Steinberger is from Austria and studied at Technische Universität Wien and HTL Braunau, according to his LinkedIn profile. He earned a BSc in Computer and Information Sciences (2008-2012), launched his university's first Mac/iOS course, and tutored teams while working with Apple Austria. Earlier, at HTL Braunau, he built a power-line-based home automation system using C, assembly, and Java.
In a 2019 interview with Semafor, Steinberger said he started his first company to solve PDF-related problems on iOS, an area where he had strong expertise. That company later became PSPDFKit GmbH, a B2B firm focused on PDF and document management tools.
Steinberger founded PSPDFKit in 2011 in Vienna and led it until October 2021. He grew the bootstrapped startup into a global remote company with more than 60 employees, moving from engineer to CEO and later into product research. The company's technology is used by major clients including Apple and Adobe. In October 2021, Insight Partners invested in PSPDFKit, after which Steinberger sold most of his stake to pursue new ventures.
His LinkedIn profile states that he went on to found Amantus Machina in May 2025. The Vienna-based startup is working on next-generation hyper-personal AI agents. He is also a co-founder of Founders of Europe, an early-stage investment consortium that backs pre-seed and seed-stage startups.
What Peter Steinberger Will Do At OpenAI
Sam Altman said in a post on X that Peter Steinberger will help build the “next generation” of personal AI agents at OpenAI.
“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,” Altman said about Steinberger, adding, “We expect this will quickly become core to our product offerings.”
Altman also said OpenClaw will continue as an open-source project 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 wrote.
Here's Altman's post:
Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI to drive the next generation of personal agents. 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. We expect this will quickly become core to our…
— Sam Altman (@sama) February 15, 2026
OpenClaw has seen rapid adoption in China, where it can be paired with locally developed language models such as DeepSeek. It can also be customised to integrate with Chinese messaging apps through tailored configurations, reported CNBC.
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