Peter Steinberger has been garnering a lot of attention and praise for his platform OpenClaw. OpenClaw is an open-source AI agent framework/software (originally named Clawdbot then briefly Moltbot and now OpenClaw) that lets users run autonomous assistants locally and connect them to messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, etc.
OpenClaw is interestingly also the platform responsible for the creation for MoltBook. Which has been in the news lately. Moltbook is a social network for AI agents (primarily ones powered by OpenClaw) to post, comment and interact with each other like a Reddit-style forum. Humans can observe but don’t post directly.
Who is Peter Steinberger?
Before getting the fame and attention for creating ClawdBot. He was a just a regular developer, although having achieved success. Peter is an Austrian and has not followed the cliche success story of successful developers ultimately ending at a Big Tech company in the Silicon Valley. He has stayed in Austria unlike other developers. He has completed his education from Technische University Wien And HTL Branau in Austria.
How did he start his journey?
According to an interview he gave to Semaphore in 2019, Peter started his first company in 2010 because he wanted to solve some problems people would have with their PDFs on iOS. This company started in 2010 turned out to be PSPDFKit, which is still going strong as a B2B company helping others manage PDF files. But after the success with his company, Peter took a step back from it and ventured into different projects.
According to a viral posts on social media, including one by Peter Yang that Steinberger reshared on X, notes that “after working on PSPDFKit for 13 years” he felt lost. “He partied, moved countries, and wandered before realising: You don’t find purpose. You create it,” wrote Yang.
Clawdbot being renamed to OpenClaw!
OpenClaw was named ClawdBot and that lets users run autonomous assistants locally and connect them to messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, etc. This AI lives in your local computer, although it is powered by popular AI models like Anthropic Claude and Google Gemini.
Why is Peter facing Criticism?
Peter who is now world renowned is garnering praise for OpenClaw has also faced criticism. He wrote on ‘X’ “The amount of crap I get for putting out a hobby project for free is quite something,”.
He added “People treat this like a multi-million dollar business. Security researchers demanding a bounty. Heck, I can barely buy a Mac Mini from the Sponsors. It’s supposed to inspire people. And I’m glad it does. And yes, most non-techies should not install this. It’s not finished, I know about the sharp edges. Heck, it’s not even 3 months old. And despite rumors otherwise, I sometimes sleep.”