Meta and OpenAI Court OpenClaw: Zuckerberg Tests It, Ultraman Offers Compute Power

OpenClaw is an open‑source AI‑agent framework built by Peter Steinberger that quickly rose to prominence, reaching 189 k stars on GitHub within a month. Its rapid popularity has drawn acquisition overtures from both Meta and OpenAI, positioning it at the center of current AI‑agent market dynamics.

Meta’s interest was highlighted when Mark Zuckerberg spent a week hands‑on testing OpenClaw, messaging Peter with praise and improvement suggestions, and famously saying “I Want YOU!”. During their discussions they compared Claude Code and Codex for ten minutes, with Zuckerberg calling Peter “a quirky but brilliant person”.

OpenAI, represented by the “Ultraman” figure, offered a compute‑centric incentive, mentioning a token‑based lure and a partnership with Cerebras that could deliver significant performance gains, though exact token amounts were not disclosed.

Despite the offers, Peter insists that OpenClaw must remain open source, envisioning a model similar to Chrome/Chromium where proprietary features could be built on top of an open core.

The prototype was built in just one hour using a command‑line tool that forwards WhatsApp messages to an AI model and returns responses. Within hours image support was added, and a later voice‑handling workflow was discovered and automated:

receive file without extension → check header → identify Opus audio → locate ffmpeg → notice Whisper missing → find OpenAI API key → curl to API → transcribe → reply

The project’s naming history reflects external pressures: after Anthropic demanded a rename, Peter temporarily rebranded to “Moltbot”, only to have the NPM package, X account, and GitHub repository hijacked within seconds, prompting a $10 k purchase of a matching X commercial account before reverting to OpenClaw.

Community extensions include Matt Schlicht’s “Moltbook”, an agent‑driven social network that generated public concern over safety, leading Peter to label it “a completely unsafe farce” and warn about AI‑spirit‑illness.

Looking ahead, Peter differentiates “Vibe Coding” from “Agent Engineering”. He defines agent engineering as treating AI as a professional engineer that can independently solve problems given contextual guidance. He predicts that 80 % of current apps will disappear, existing only as APIs served by agents that users invoke to complete tasks.

While acknowledging that AI will reshape programming, Peter stresses that humans will still steer project direction, and that the lowered technical barrier will enable many more people to become developers through agent‑based tooling.

Peter also reflects on his personal situation, noting that having achieved wealth freedom, decisions about selling or continuing OpenClaw are merely incremental to his already substantial resources.