From Vienna to Silicon Valley: The Unprecedented Rise of OpenClaw and Peter Steinberger

These are words you don't hear every day in the tech industry, as reported by the Wiener Zeitung. Dave Morin, Facebook veteran and heavyweight in Silicon Valley, called him a “legend.” Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, simply described him as a “genius.” We're talking about Peter Steinberger, a developer from Vienna who, with his tool OpenClaw (formerly Clawdbot), has triggered a dynamic that has attracted the attention of industry giants such as Meta and Anthropic.

The birth of “action AI”

It all began in November 2025. Steinberger, who had sold his startup PSPDFKit for around 100 million euros in 2021, devoted himself to a “fun project.” He wanted to create an AI that not only chats, but actually acts. The result was OpenClaw – a so-called agentic AI.

Unlike conventional chatbots, OpenClaw uses various models and tools to perform complex tasks independently. The whole thing is controlled in an unconventional way via messengers such as WhatsApp or Telegram. Steinberger himself uses the application to track his diet plan or control smart household appliances. “This year is the year of personal assistants,” predicts the founder. Many classic apps could simply become obsolete as a result of such agents.

The hype in numbers

The speed with which OpenClaw conquered the developer community is breathtaking, with over 178,000 stars on GitHub (equivalent to “likes” in the tech world). Discord has more than 12,000 active members in its community group, and events such as the first “ClawCon” in San Francisco attracted over 1,000 participants; a follow-up event in Vienna recently drew 500 interested attendees.

Security vs. innovation

But the rapid rise has its downsides. Steinberger openly admitted that he initially focused on “trust instead of security” during development. The consequences were swift: over 400 malicious “skills” were discovered on the Clawhub extension platform that could compromise private data.

To counteract this, the project entered into a partnership with the security service VirusTotal (a Google subsidiary). Nevertheless, the fundamental problem remains: anyone who grants AI extensive access rights to their own computer opens the door to abuse. This is probably also the reason why heavyweights such as Google have been hesitant to use similar tools so far.

The bombshell: Switch to OpenAI

On February 16, 2026, the bombshell finally dropped: Peter Steinberger is moving to OpenAI. Sam Altman personally confirmed the deal on Platform X. Steinberger will be driving the development of the next generation of personal agents there.

For Steinberger, it is a conscious decision against entrepreneurship and in favor of research. “I've already invested 13 years of my life in building a company,” he explained, referring to his PSPDFKit past. He now wants to “change the world” rather than sink into administrative tasks as a CEO again.

OpenClaw itself is not going to die. It will continue as an open-source project under the umbrella of a new foundation, which is largely sponsored by OpenAI.

A much-needed PR victory

For OpenAI, the commitment comes at the right time, as reported by “DerStandard”. The company is currently struggling with the departure of well-known developers and pressure from investors to finally present profitable business models for the billions invested. With Steinberger, Altman is not only buying technical expertise, but also the currently “hottest” project in the AI scene.

Steinberger's stated goal remains ambitious: he wants to build an AI agent “that even my mother can use.” With OpenAI's infrastructure behind him, this dream could become reality faster than many experts thought just a few months ago.

Peter Steinberger