Peter Steinberger created OpenClaw, the open-source personal AI agent, after bootstrapping the PDF developer-tools company PSPDFKit. He joined OpenAI in February 2026. His Lex Fridman interview traces the agent’s growth, rebrands and security problems.
The company announced more than €100 million from Insight Partners in 2021. The bar shows the disclosed floor. The announcement says Steinberger and Martin Schürrer remained significant investors. [2] ↗
| Observation | Value |
|---|---|
| Investment floor · 2021 | 100,000,000 EUR |
100,000 is the lower bound for cumulative GitHub stars reported January 29, 2026. [3] ↗
| Observation | Value |
|---|---|
| Jan 29, 2026 | 100,000 stars |
Weekly downloads as reported retrospectively by YC Root Access in August 2026. [4] ↗
| Observation | Value |
|---|---|
| Peak week | 4,700,000 downloads |
AlphaMoat estimates, January–September 2026, rounded as published. The series covers website visits. The provider does not specify device coverage on this page. [5] ↗
Observed months
| Observation | Value |
|---|---|
| 2026-01 | 2,600,000 visits |
| 2026-02 | 26,400,000 visits |
| 2026-03 | 28,800,000 visits |
| 2026-04 | 14,200,000 visits |
| 2026-05 | 7,700,000 visits |
| 2026-06 | 4,700,000 visits |
| 2026-07 | 3,400,000 visits |
| 2026-08 | 2,800,000 visits |
| 2026-09 | 2,600,000 visits |
| Period / scope | Reported figure |
|---|---|
| PSPDFKit transaction | Steinberger describes a nine-figure exit. Exact consideration, currency and personal proceeds are undisclosed in that account. [1] ↗ |
Steinberger says that after selling shares in the company he had built for over 13 years, burnout left him unable to imagine building another company. He later described AI tools as part of what drew him back to programming. [8] ↗
The first version relayed messages from WhatsApp to a coding agent. The need to reach a local tool from his phone gave him a concrete reason to build it. [3] ↗
Steinberger reported two million visitors in one week in the January rebrand announcement. The project lets users run an agent on a machine they control and reach it from familiar chat apps. [3] ↗
Steinberger joined OpenAI to work on personal agents. OpenClaw is stewarded by an independent foundation, according to his own biography. [1] ↗
Steinberger says Anthropic’s legal team asked him to reconsider the Clawd name. The team tried Moltbot after a late-night community brainstorm and then settled on OpenClaw. [3] ↗
Fridman’s interview has a dedicated section on OpenClaw security. An assistant that reads messages and can act on a machine gives untrusted inputs a path to much more sensitive capabilities. [9] ↗
The January release announcement lists 34 security-related commits and machine-checkable security models amid the rapid adoption. [3] ↗
Revenue, exits & abandoned experiments.
| Project | What it does | Revenue & numbers | Role / status |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenClaw | Open-source personal agent, first prototyped as WhatsApp Relay and later known as Clawd and Moltbot. | 100k+ stars by Jan 29, 2026; peak 4.7m weekly downloads reported by YC. | Creator · foundation stewardship [4] ↗ |
| PSPDFKit / Nutrient | PDF viewing, editing, signing and collaboration SDKs. | >€100m Insight investment in 2021; exact personal proceeds undisclosed. | Co-founder · stepped back from full-time role in 2021 [2] ↗ |
| Aspects | Objective-C method interception library. | Public open-source repository. | Author · repository [10] ↗ |
Conversations, product walkthroughs and the reasoning behind the numbers.
Lex #491 covers the WhatsApp prototype, the rebrands, security and the offers from OpenAI and Meta.
Watch on YouTube ↗YC’s shorter interview explains how the agent gained capabilities its creator had not explicitly designed.
Watch on YouTube ↗The later YC talk revisits the pressure of running the project after it went viral.
Watch on YouTube ↗Selected posts · 5 November 2026
YC Root Access put the project’s peak at 4.7 million weekly downloads and described the pressure that followed mass adoption. [4] ↗
