Story of Peter Steinberger
But the path was pure chaos.
→ sold his company PSPDFKit for $116M+ in 2021
→ spent three years in an existential crisis and burnout
→ came back to vibe-code 43 failed projects in a row
Then came Project 44
→ built Clawdbot, an open-source agent that runs on your machine
→ it went viral instantly, earning 100,000 GitHub stars
The fall:
→ Anthropic hit him with a trademark complaint over the name "Clawd"
→ forced to rename it to "Moltbot" (because lobsters molt)
→ crypto scammers hijacked his old handles in seconds
→ fake tokens hit $16M market cap while he battled for control
The redemption:
→ almost quit entirely, but decided to rebrand one last time
→ launched "OpenClaw" and it became a global sensation
→ Meta and OpenAI both entered a bidding war for his talent
The choice:
→ chose OpenAI over Meta , joined on February 14, 2026
→ Sam Altman publicly called him "a genius"
→ OpenClaw transitions to a non-profit foundation to stay free forever
