Descriptions:
Matt Wolfe chronicles the full arc of the OpenClaw project—formerly known as Claudebot and Moltbot—from a viral open-source experiment to a high-profile OpenAI acquisition. At the center is Peter Steinberger, the developer behind PSPDFKit (used by Apple, Dropbox, and SAP), who built the project as a personal side experiment connecting WhatsApp to Claude Code. It became the fastest-growing open-source repository in GitHub history, reaching 201,000 stars and over 2 million visitors in a single week.
The story involves a cascade of crises: a trademark notice from Anthropic forced a rebrand from Claudebot to Moltbot, and within 10 seconds of releasing the old username, crypto scammers hijacked it to distribute malware, launch fake Solana tokens, and spam Steinberger’s mentions. A covert second rebrand to OpenClaw followed. Security researchers then discovered over 30,000 publicly accessible OpenClaw instances with no authentication, found that 93% of verified instances contained security vulnerabilities, and uncovered that a related platform called Moltbook had exposed 1.5 million API keys and 35,000 user emails due to a database misconfiguration. CrowdStrike released a dedicated removal tool for enterprises.
Despite the chaos, Sam Altman announced that Steinberger would be joining OpenAI to lead personal agent development—chosen over active interest from Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and a personal call from Microsoft’s Satya Nadella. OpenClaw will continue as an OpenAI-supported open-source project. The episode is a vivid case study in how a solo developer’s side project can reshape the direction of a major AI platform.
📺 Source: Matt Wolfe · Published February 16, 2026
🏷️ Format: News Analysis
