TL;DR
The AI assistant formerly known as Clawdbot has settled on OpenClaw as its new name after legal issues with Anthropic. The project has attracted over 100,000 GitHub stars in two months and now has sponsorship from prominent tech founders, though maintainers warn it’s not yet safe for mainstream users.
The Lobster’s Final Form
Creator Peter Steinberger, an Austrian developer, had his project renamed twice—first from Clawdbot to Moltbot after Anthropic raised trademark concerns, then to OpenClaw. “The lobster has molted into its final form,” he wrote, referencing how lobsters grow by shedding their shells. This time, he researched trademarks and even got OpenAI’s permission to avoid further issues.
The rapid name changes highlight the project’s youth, but its growth has been remarkable: over 100,000 GitHub stars in just two months. “This project has grown far beyond what I could maintain alone,” Steinberger acknowledged, adding several open source contributors as maintainers.
Industry Recognition
Tesla’s former AI director Andrej Karpathy called the OpenClaw phenomenon “genuinely the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing I have seen recently.” British programmer Simon Willison described the AI social network Moltbook, where OpenClaw agents interact, as “the most interesting place on the internet right now.”
The project has attracted sponsors with serious credentials, including Path founder Dave Morin and Ben Tossell, who sold Makerpad to Zapier in 2021. “We need to back people like Peter who are building open source tools anyone can pick up and use,” Tossell told TechCrunch.
Security First—But Not Yet Solved
Despite the excitement, OpenClaw’s maintainers are explicit about limitations. One top maintainer posted on Discord: “If you can’t understand how to run a command line, this is far too dangerous of a project for you to use safely. This isn’t a tool that should be used by the general public at this time.”
Steinberger acknowledged prompt injection remains “an industry-wide unsolved problem” where malicious messages could trick AI models into unintended actions. Running OpenClaw outside controlled environments is still inadvisable.
Looking Forward
OpenClaw has begun accepting sponsors, with tiers from “krill” ($5/month) to “poseidon” ($500/month). Steinberger doesn’t keep the funds personally—he’s “figuring out how to pay maintainers properly, full-time if possible.”
Going mainstream will require significant investment in security. For now, OpenClaw remains a project for technical enthusiasts willing to accept the risks in exchange for early access to genuinely autonomous AI assistance.