OpenClaw at a glance
Peter Steinberger's self-hosted personal agent, which runs on your own machine and answers through chat apps, went viral as Clawdbot in January 2026. After Anthropic raised the name, it became Moltbot on January 27 and OpenClaw on January 29.
What changed with OpenClaw
OpenClaw started as a weekend project by Peter Steinberger, the founder of PSPDFKit. The repository's first commits date to November 24, 2025, when it was a WhatsApp relay published on npm as warelay. It was briefly called Clawdis in December, and a January 4, 2026 commit renamed the project Clawdbot, a pun on Claude with a lobster claw.
In the second half of January, Clawdbot spread quickly among developers. It runs on a laptop, home server or VPS, connects to models from several providers, and takes instructions through apps people already use, including WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Slack and Microsoft Teams. It can run commands, manage files and install community skills, which is what made it feel like an assistant that really does things.
Steinberger said Anthropic's legal team asked him to reconsider the name. On January 27, 2026, the code and npm package were renamed Moltbot, a nod to lobsters shedding their shells. On January 29, Steinberger published Introducing OpenClaw, saying the new name had cleared trademark searches and that migration code was written; the rename commit and the first openclaw releases landed early on January 30 UTC.
The launch post reported more than 100,000 GitHub stars and 2 million visitors in a single week, figures the project published itself. The project is MIT licensed. Within days it also faced its first major vulnerability, CVE-2026-25253, which it fixed in version 2026.1.29.
OpenClaw in numbers
Values are copied from the linked source on the date shown. They are not IA Compa measurements.
- GitHub stars (openclaw/openclaw)as of · Source for GitHub stars (openclaw/openclaw): github.com (opens in a new tab)
- 393,998
Where to compare OpenClaw
Independent leaderboards and official resources for comparing this model yourself. Rankings change often; each site shows its own current data.
Why OpenClaw matters for businesses
For businesses, OpenClaw marked the moment self-hosted agents with real system access went mainstream. That power comes with risk: an agent that holds tokens, runs shell commands and installs third-party skills should run on a dedicated machine, with only the accounts and data it needs, and be kept up to date.
Put it to work: AI Agents
OpenClaw updates since publication
Dated changes since publication. The original article text above is kept as written on its date.
Update (Updated)
OpenClaw 2.0 (release 2026.8.1) shipped with a simpler first-time setup, a rebuilt browser app and shared multiplayer sessions. The project said 933 contributors worked on the release.
openclaw.ai (opens in a new tab)Status
The OpenClaw Foundation launched as a US 501(c)(3) non-profit chaired by Dave Morin, with Steinberger still leading technical decisions. It commits to keeping OpenClaw MIT licensed and lists OpenAI and the University of Michigan among its donors.
openclaw.ai (opens in a new tab)Status
Peter Steinberger announced he is joining OpenAI to work on bringing agents to everyone. He said OpenClaw would move to a foundation and stay open source and independent, with OpenAI already sponsoring the project.
steipete.me (opens in a new tab)
Sources for this story
- Introducing OpenClaw (opens in a new tab)Official
OpenClaw Blog · openclaw.ai
- openclaw/openclaw repository (opens in a new tab)Official
GitHub · github.com
- chore: rename project to clawdbot (January 4, 2026) (opens in a new tab)Official
GitHub (openclaw/openclaw) · github.com
- refactor: rename clawdbot to moltbot with legacy compat (January 27, 2026) (opens in a new tab)Official
GitHub (openclaw/openclaw) · github.com
- refactor: rename to openclaw (January 30, 2026 UTC) (opens in a new tab)Official
GitHub (openclaw/openclaw) · github.com
- OpenClaw, OpenAI and the future (opens in a new tab)Official
Peter Steinberger · steipete.me
- Introducing the OpenClaw Foundation (opens in a new tab)Official
OpenClaw Blog · openclaw.ai
- OpenAI Hires OpenClaw AI Agent Developer Peter Steinberger (opens in a new tab)Press
Bloomberg · bloomberg.com
Last verified: . IA Compa summarizes public announcements for business readers. We are not affiliated with the companies mentioned. Always confirm details, pricing, and availability with the official source.
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