Peter Steinberger, the Austrian software program engineer behind the viral open-source AI agent OpenClaw, is becoming a member of OpenAI to spearhead growth of next-generation private assistants, as confirmed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in an announcement on X on Sunday.
Altman mentioned that Steinberger may provide distinctive views on how superior brokers would possibly work collectively to perform significant duties for folks, and that these concepts are anticipated to shortly combine into OpenAI’s product lineup.
Peter Steinberger is becoming a member of OpenAI to drive the following era of private brokers. He’s a genius with quite a lot of wonderful concepts about the way forward for very sensible brokers interacting with one another to do very helpful issues for folks. We count on this can shortly develop into core to our…
— Sam Altman (@sama) February 15, 2026
The recruitment marks a big expertise acquisition for the San Francisco-based AI lab, bringing in a developer whose autonomous agent captured widespread consideration earlier this 12 months.
Steinberger constructed his status because the founding father of PSPDFKit, a document-processing toolkit deployed on greater than 1 billion gadgets, earlier than exiting the enterprise after a 13-year run.
His pivot to AI brokers started modestly in late 2025 with a facet mission initially referred to as Clawdbot. Trademark issues pressured two rebrands earlier than the device settled on its present title on the finish of January.
The agent, which permits customers to delegate duties by messaging functions, exploded in reputation throughout the first weeks of 2026, accumulating 198,000 stars on GitHub and drawing two million website visits.
At OpenAI, Steinberger will deal with constructing private brokers able to dealing with advanced, real-world duties autonomously, an space the place the corporate faces intensifying competitors from rivals, together with Anthropic.
