TBPN · Sep 29, 2026 · 22m · 15m saved
With Peter Steinberger, OpenClaw founder, now at OpenAI
Peter Steinberger, who built the open-source AI agent OpenClaw and then joined OpenAI to work on personal agents, said the hype around his own product got ahead of what it could actually do.
He came on TBPN to describe what the last year has looked like from the inside of that hype cycle, and where he thinks the industry still hasn't figured out how personal AI agents should actually work.
"People were expecting this perfect magical thing that one guy slopped in the basement."
Peter Steinberger, founder of the open-source AI agent OpenClaw, who joined OpenAI in February 2026 to lead work on personal agents, spoke with TBPN's hosts at DevDay.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 7 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
His pitch to companies trying to block AI shopping agents: "then I buy something else"
He still doesn't know whether the future is one personal agent or a swarm of them working in hierarchies
OpenClaw's hype outran what it could do, he said, and he wishes there had been less of it
He moved his whole team to sharing their agent sessions with each other, after early pushback and embarrassment
He is teaching his own agent to rebuild parts of his operating system, including compiling a Linux kernel to fix a webcam driver
At OpenAI he splits his time between foundation-level agent work and testing new ideas that sometimes get built into single products
He compared today's e-commerce bot-blocking to a Steam Deck launch lottery, arguing that whoever clicks fastest is no longer the right way to allocate anything
1. The Spark Was Annoyance
Asked where the idea for OpenClaw came from, Steinberger said it began with irritation at his own computer, not a grand plan.
"My spark is annoyance." — Peter Steinberger
"It annoyed me." — Peter Steinberger
He said the pace of model improvement means any workflow built today is already behind.
"Whatever workflow we think we have right now, it's already outdated. We cannot catch up with the models." — Peter Steinberger
Asked what made OpenClaw take off the way it did, he said it wasn't a single feature so much as showing people a different way to use AI than pure chat.
"I think I just showed people a different way" — Peter Steinberger
"How to use AI." — Peter Steinberger
"It can like install stuff on your computer or like buy things for you or like do whatever you want that you can do in your computer if you just only give it the right tools." — Peter Steinberger
