Is Peter Steinberger About to Sell OpenClaw to OpenAI?

Peter Steinberger built PSPDFKit into a $100 million exit. Then he burned out, stepped away from code, and came back to build OpenClaw, an open-source AI agent that now has over 180,000 stars on GitHub. It’s the fastest-growing open-source project in GitHub history. And now Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg are both trying to buy it.

That much is public knowledge. Steinberger confirmed in his Lex Fridman interview (episode #491, dropped February 12) that he has concrete offers on the table from both Meta and OpenAI. He’s also spoken with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Three of the biggest companies in technology are competing for a project built by one Austrian developer and a swarm of community contributors.

But there are reasons to think this is heading toward OpenAI specifically. And the clues aren’t subtle.

The Sam Altman Connection

In the Lex Fridman conversation, Steinberger described his interaction with Altman as a “really, really cool discussion,” calling him “very thoughtful, brilliant.” He said he liked Altman from the limited time they spent together. That’s a notably warm characterization from someone who is also negotiating with Meta.

For comparison, Steinberger’s comments about Zuckerberg focused more on Zuckerberg reaching out personally. Respectful, but more transactional in tone.

More telling: OpenAI is already contributing tokens to the OpenClaw project. That’s not an acquisition offer. That’s an ongoing operational relationship. OpenAI is actively subsidizing OpenClaw’s infrastructure, which creates a practical dependency that goes beyond a boardroom negotiation.

Steinberger has also described himself as “the biggest unpaid promoter for Codex,” OpenAI’s coding model. That’s a man already embedded in the OpenAI ecosystem by choice, not by contract.

The Developers Interview

An OpenAI developers interview with Steinberger is reportedly in the works. OpenAI’s developer relations team doesn’t profile random open-source maintainers. They feature people in their orbit. Getting the Steinberger interview signals that OpenAI wants the developer community to associate OpenClaw with their platform, even before any deal is signed.

If this were purely a Meta acquisition, you wouldn’t see OpenAI platforming the creator.

Reading the X Posts

Steinberger’s activity on X (@steipete) over the past few weeks has been telling. He paid $10,000 for a Twitter business account to claim the OpenClaw handle, which had been squatted on since 2016. That’s not something you do if you’re about to hand the project over to Meta (which would rebrand it anyway). You invest in a brand identity when you expect that identity to persist.

His posts have leaned toward technical discussions about agent architecture and Codex integration, not about Llama or Meta’s AI infrastructure. The gravitational pull is visible.

What a Deal Might Look Like

Steinberger has been emphatic about one thing: OpenClaw must remain open source regardless of what happens. “It is clear that his project must remain open source regardless of which option he chooses,” per reporting from Trending Topics.

This constraint actually favors OpenAI. Here’s why: OpenAI has been building out its platform strategy around Codex as the model layer and needs a compelling agent layer on top. OpenClaw, with 180,000 GitHub stars and a massive community, would give them the most popular open-source agent in existence. They wouldn’t need to close-source it. They’d just need it to work best with Codex, which Steinberger is already doing voluntarily.

Meta’s play would be different. Meta wants open-source AI to run on Llama, and OpenClaw already supports multiple model providers. But acquiring OpenClaw to promote Llama would create tension with the project’s model-agnostic community. Steinberger knows this.

The Money Question

Steinberger’s stated position is that money isn’t the primary motivator. “I don’t do this for the money. I don’t give a fuck,” he told Lex Fridman. But he also said it would “feel gratifying to put a price on all his free work.”

That’s human. He sold PSPDFKit for over $100 million. He doesn’t need another payday. What he likely wants is the largest possible impact for the project, which means the acquirer that can put OpenClaw in front of the most developers. OpenAI has the broader developer platform. Meta has Llama adoption but a weaker developer ecosystem story.

The Bottom Line

Nothing is signed. Steinberger has said explicitly that nothing has been decided. He could walk away from both offers and keep building independently. He has the financial freedom to do that.

But the accumulation of signals points in one direction: the warm relationship with Altman, OpenAI already providing tokens, the Codex evangelism, the upcoming developers interview, the investment in the OpenClaw brand identity, and the technical alignment with OpenAI’s platform strategy.

If we had to bet, we’d say OpenClaw becomes part of the OpenAI ecosystem within the next few months, structured as an acqui-hire with open-source commitments baked in. Steinberger gets resources and reach. OpenAI gets the most popular agent framework on earth and the community that comes with it.

We could be completely wrong. But the breadcrumbs are hard to ignore.

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