The rise and fall of OpenClaw: a timeline in data (2026)
Who created OpenClaw, who owns it now and why interest fell: a sourced timeline from Clawdbot to the foundation, with US search and GitHub star data.
OpenClaw was created by Peter Steinberger, who started it as a weekend hack in November 2025, and since July 2026 it has belonged to the OpenClaw Foundation, a US non-profit that employs the core team, while Steinberger works at OpenAI and still makes the technical calls. Within three months it went from nothing to about a million US Google searches a month and 200,000 GitHub stars, then lost most of that attention to security problems, a subscription change at Anthropic and a rival, Hermes Agent. It isn’t dead: it ships several releases a week, but it is no longer the project everyone is talking about.
We haven’t run OpenClaw ourselves. This history is built from the project’s blog and GitHub release data, press coverage and DataForSEO search data, each linked where it’s used; where sources disagree on a date, we say so (how we work).
OpenClaw at a glance
| Created by | Peter Steinberger (@steipete), listed as creator on the credits page |
| First release | November 25, 2025, under the name “warelay” (GitHub releases) |
| Called OpenClaw since | January 29, 2026 (announcement) |
| Belongs to | The OpenClaw Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit announced July 8, 2026; the code is “MIT, copyright OpenClaw Foundation” (foundation post, credits) |
| The founder today | At OpenAI since February 2026; still the project’s “Clawfather” |
| GitHub stars | 392,933 on October 20, 2026 (GitHub API) |
Every milestone, with its source
The timeline has 24 dated events from OpenClaw’s blog, its GitHub releases and press coverage, each linked to its source. Where sources give different dates, the event says so.
OpenClaw, November 2025 to October 2026
Dates are the source's publication date unless the event says otherwise. Filter by product, people, security, ecosystem or business.
- ProductFirst release, as "warelay"
Release v0.1.1 of a project that began as a weekend hack called WhatsApp Relay. The GitHub repository was created the day before.
Source - ProductReleases renamed "clawdis"
Starting with v2.0.0-beta1. Steinberger's blog calls the project Clawd from November 2025, a pun on Claude.
Source - ProductFirst "Clawdbot" release
v2026.1.5. The last release under that name, v2026.1.24, came out on January 25.
Source - EcosystemIt goes viral
TechCrunch counts more than 44,200 GitHub stars and reports Cloudflare stock up 14% premarket on social-media buzz about the agent.
Source - BusinessRenamed Moltbot
After Anthropic objected; in Steinberger's words, its legal team "politely asked us to reconsider". Business Today dates the rename January 28. No release was ever named Moltbot.
Source - EcosystemMoltbook launches
A social network for AI agents, started by Matt Schlicht. NBC News counted more than 37,000 agents. Wikipedia's OpenClaw article gives January 27.
Source - ProductRenamed OpenClaw
The announcement cites "over 100,000 GitHub stars" and "2 million visitors in a single week". The first release under the new name, 2026.1.29, followed on January 30 (UTC).
Source - SecurityCVE-2026-25253 made public
A one-click token theft leading to remote code execution, rated CVSS 8.8 and exploitable even on a gateway bound to the local machine. Fixed in 2026.1.29.
Source - SecurityClawHavoc: 341 malicious skills
Koi Security audited 2,857 skills on ClawHub and found 341 malicious ones, most pushing the Atomic Stealer macOS malware.
Source - SecurityVirusTotal scans ClawHub skills
OpenClaw announces a partnership with VirusTotal for skill security.
Source - PeopleSteinberger joins OpenAI
He writes that OpenClaw "will move to a foundation and stay open and independent". Wikipedia dates the announcement February 14.
Source - Ecosystem200,000 GitHub stars
88 days after the repository was created, per Star History. By its count, OpenClaw passed React by March 1.
Source - BusinessMeta buys Moltbook
Terms undisclosed. Founders Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr join Meta Superintelligence Labs.
Source - SecurityChina's CNCERT warning reported
The Register reports CNCERT's warning of an "extremely weak default security configuration" and reported bans at some government agencies and state banks.
Source - EcosystemNVIDIA announces NemoClaw
A sandboxed reference stack for OpenClaw, unveiled at GTC. Jensen Huang: "OpenClaw is the operating system for personal AI."
Source - BusinessClaude subscriptions stop covering OpenClaw
Users of third-party tools need paid extra usage or an API key. Anthropic's position shifted again later in the year.
Source - EcosystemHermes Agent passes OpenClaw on OpenRouter
In daily tokens on OpenRouter's app ranking: by late May, per The Batch (May 22); "by June", per Turing Post.
Source - Product"OpenClaw Had a Rough Week"
After releases on April 25 and 30 slowed gateways and degraded channels, the team promises a smaller core, a new release process and an LTS line.
Source - ProductiPhone and Android apps
Native phone apps launch. They connect to a gateway running on another machine.
Source - PeopleThe OpenClaw Foundation
OpenClaw becomes a 501(c)(3) non-profit chaired by Dave Morin, with a paid core team. Donors include the University of Michigan and OpenAI.
Source - ProductExtended-stable releases
A slower update channel, each line supported for at least a month, plus a public maturity scorecard.
Source - ProductOpenClaw 2.0
Release 2026.8.1, "by far the largest update in the history of OpenClaw", with 933 contributors. The GitHub release is stamped August 31 (UTC).
Source - EcosystemMicrosoft Autopilot, built on OpenClaw
Microsoft's personal agent, formerly called Scout, in preview. "Its foundation is OpenClaw."
Source - BusinessOpenClaw Enterprise
A free, self-hosted control plane for persistent agents, started at OpenAI and donated to the foundation, built with Red Hat and NVIDIA. Internal pilots only until a 1.0.
Source
The names: from WhatsApp Relay to OpenClaw
Steinberger’s own account says the project “started as ‘WhatsApp Relay’”, a weekend hack, and was named Clawd in November 2025, a pun on Claude with a claw (OpenClaw blog). GitHub’s release names tell the rest: “warelay” from November 25, 2025, “clawdis” from December 19, and “clawdbot” from January 5, 2026 (releases). Wikipedia’s infobox gives other dates, without a source.
Around January 27, 2026, in the week it went viral, Clawdbot became Moltbot. Steinberger later wrote that “Anthropic’s legal team politely asked us to reconsider”; TechCrunch called it a legal challenge from Anthropic and reported that he said he “messed up” the switch, during which crypto scammers grabbed his old handles (TechCrunch). No GitHub release ever carried the Moltbot name.
Two days later came the name that stuck. The post “Introducing OpenClaw”, dated January 29, said Moltbot “never quite rolled off the tongue” and that this time “trademark searches came back clear” (blog). TechCrunch reported that Anthropic didn’t prompt this second rename, and that Steinberger “asked OpenAI for permission just to be sure” (TechCrunch), two weeks before he joined OpenAI.
Going viral
The breakout came in the last week of January. On January 27, TechCrunch said Clawdbot had “more than 44,200 stars” and that Cloudflare’s stock rose 14% premarket on social-media buzz about it (TechCrunch).
Then came Moltbook, a social network for OpenClaw agents launched by Matt Schlicht on January 28 (Wikipedia’s OpenClaw article says January 27), which NBC said drew more than 37,000 agents and over a million human visitors (NBC). After reports of an unsecured database and an exposed key (Wikipedia), Meta bought Moltbook on March 10 for undisclosed terms (TechCrunch).
On GitHub, Star History counts the days from the repository’s creation on November 24, 2025 to each star milestone. By its count, no software repository had reached 200,000 stars faster until DeepSeek Harness did it in 15 days in August 2026 (Star History). Look at the gaps: 3 days from 50,000 to 100,000 stars, 5 days to 150,000, then 16 days to 200,000. Growth was already slowing in early February, at the height of the hype.
The OpenAI move and the foundation
On February 15, 2026, Steinberger wrote: “I’m joining OpenAI to work on bringing agents to everyone.” In the same post he said OpenClaw “will move to a foundation and stay open and independent”, and that OpenAI “already sponsors the project” (steipete.me). Sam Altman said on X that OpenClaw would “live in a foundation as an open source project that OpenAI will continue to support”, as quoted by TechCrunch.
The foundation took five months. On July 8, a post signed by Dave Morin, as chairperson, and Steinberger, as “Clawfather”, announced that “OpenClaw is officially a 501(c)(3) American non-profit organization” (foundation post).
Who runs OpenClaw now
- Leadership. Morin chairs the foundation. Steinberger leads “Claw Labs” at OpenAI, and the post says “Peter keeps making the calls, especially the technical ones.” It names no other board members; TechCrunch has called Morin an “OpenClaw board member”.
- Staff. A full-time team. Engineering: Vincent Koc (chief architect), Josh Avant, Patrick Erichsen, Dallin Romney, Jason Sy and Gideon Adegbesan. Operations: Jen Vescio (partnerships), Matt Jasie (finance), Hannes Rudolph (community) and Kelly Pike (talent). Volunteer maintainers still contribute.
- Governance. Councils convened by the foundation cover agent identity, agent profiles, evals and enterprise deployment. The README says the foundation “employs the core team and signs releases” (GitHub).
Who pays for it
The July post names four major donors: the University of Michigan (the largest, which also launched an Institute for Agentic Computing), OpenAI (which supports inference), Offline Holdings and Lobster Computer Company. The README’s donor list also names Amazon and Red Hat, and says “none of them own or direct the project”. The FAQ calls the foundation “funded by donations” and “not venture-backed” (FAQ).
So OpenAI doesn’t own OpenClaw. Its footprint is still large: it employs the founder, is a major donor, and OpenClaw Enterprise started inside OpenAI before being donated to the foundation (announcement). Tom’s Hardware reported that OpenAI also pays for the Codex usage of the three-person team building OpenClaw, which Steinberger’s dashboard showed at about $1.3 million over 30 days (Tom’s Hardware). Formally, the project is independent; how independent in practice is for you to judge. Note that openclaw.foundation is a domain for sale, not the foundation’s site.
Security problems
The security trouble started the week the project got its final name:
- CVE-2026-25253 (CVSS 8.8). A one-click flaw in the Control UI let an attacker steal the gateway token and run code, even on a gateway that listened only on the local machine. Mav Levin of depthfirst found it; it was fixed in 2026.1.29, the first OpenClaw release (The Hacker News).
- ClawHavoc. Koi Security audited 2,857 skills on ClawHub and found 341 malicious ones, about 12%; 335 pushed the Atomic Stealer macOS malware through fake prerequisites. Publishing a skill required only a GitHub account at least a week old (The Hacker News).
- Official warnings. The Register reported in March that China’s CNCERT had warned of an “extremely weak default security configuration”, that local authorities reportedly banned OpenClaw at some government agencies and state banks, and that Gartner had called it an “unacceptable cybersecurity risk” for business users (The Register).
- More CVEs. Turing Post reports nine CVEs in four days in March, one rated CVSS 9.9 (Turing Post). We haven’t confirmed that count in a vulnerability database.
- 2.0 didn’t end it. The Register’s review of OpenClaw 2.0 was headlined “pours glitter on slow-burning security dumpster fire”. It pointed to patch notes saying “Secret Store values are not encrypted at rest”, and to a new sandbox that is off by default (The Register).
The cost shows in business adoption. In September, OpenAI’s Kevin Lin told The Register that “the default stance of IT in most organizations is to ban agentic platforms like OpenClaw altogether” (The Register). OpenClaw Enterprise is the project’s answer to that. For what to do on your own install, see is OpenClaw safe?
The Anthropic subscription change
The project first named after Claude had a hard year with Anthropic. On April 4, 2026, Claude subscriptions stopped covering third-party tools such as OpenClaw; users had to buy extra usage or switch to an API key. Anthropic’s Boris Cherny said “subscriptions weren’t built for the usage patterns of these third-party tools”, and Steinberger replied that Anthropic had copied features “into their closed harness” and then locked out open source (TechCrunch).
Anthropic then moved back and forth. It announced monthly Agent SDK credits that would cover tools like OpenClaw on May 13 (VentureBeat), paused that plan on June 15, and in an October 7 update its Help Center says you “can still use the Claude Agent SDK, claude -p, and third-party apps with your subscription limits” (Anthropic Help Center). Its Claude Code terms, meanwhile, say third-party developers may not “route requests through Free, Pro, or Max plan credentials on behalf of their users” (Claude Code legal).
OpenAI went the other way. OpenClaw let users run agent turns on a ChatGPT subscription through Codex sign-in from May, and on September 29 OpenAI named OpenClaw among 16 launch partners when it opened Plus and Pro plan allowances to partner tools (The New Stack). For anyone who wants a frontier model on a flat monthly plan, OpenAI’s became the simpler route. Our model guide covers the details.
Hermes Agent and the competitors
The biggest rival came from Nous Research. Hermes Agent launched in February 2026, according to The Batch and Kilo; its first tagged public release, v0.2.0, came on March 12 (GitHub). It does the same job, with stricter security defaults and an agent that writes its own skills.
On OpenRouter, the clearest public usage data, Hermes moved ahead by late May according to The Batch, or by June according to Turing Post, which cites 224 billion daily tokens against OpenClaw’s 186 billion (The Batch, Turing Post). By October the gap was wide: in OpenRouter’s monthly ranking, with data through October 19, Hermes Agent was first with about 52 trillion tokens and OpenClaw ninth with about 7.5 trillion (OpenRouter). That counts only traffic routed through OpenRouter, not people who connect to Anthropic or OpenAI directly. On GitHub, OpenClaw still leads, 392,933 stars to 255,399 on October 20.
Smaller projects copied the idea in lighter packages: nanobot (49,210 stars), ZeroClaw (33,010), NanoClaw (30,980), PicoClaw (30,082) and IronClaw (12,669), per GitHub on October 20. NVIDIA’s NemoClaw, announced on March 16, wraps OpenClaw in a sandbox rather than replacing it (NVIDIA). The big platforms absorbed the concept too: PCWorld’s Ben Patterson lists ChatGPT Work, Claude Cowork, NemoClaw, Microsoft’s Scout and Google’s Gemini Spark among products that “scooped up” OpenClaw’s best features (PCWorld). Microsoft’s, now called Autopilot, is itself built on OpenClaw. Compare them in OpenClaw vs Hermes Agent, OpenClaw alternatives and our overview of self-hosted AI agents.
Why interest fell
DataForSEO’s keyword data, which comes from Google Ads, shows US searches for “openclaw” by month. They went from 20 in December 2025 to about 60,500 in January, about 1,000,000 in both February and March, and then fell every month to 74,000 in August, where it held in September. That’s about 93% below the peak, but still far above where it started.
Search data shows when interest fell, not why. Sources have offered these causes:
- Security. The CVEs, the malicious skills and the official warnings above. Turing Post’s authors wrote that the March CVE cluster “changed the risk calculation for some developers”.
- A rival people liked. The Batch said interest in Hermes grew in late April and May because “successive releases made it easier to use and its self-improving behavior more robust”. The Neuron cited Reddit sentiment surveys suggesting about 30% of OpenClaw users had switched (The Neuron).
- Broken updates. Releases on April 25 and 30 slowed gateways, caused plugin-repair loops and degraded channels. Steinberger wrote “This was not one bug” and promised a smaller core, an LTS line and a “less founder-driven” project (blog). Kilo cited community reports of about a 25% chance that an update breaks message delivery, scheduled jobs or webhooks (Kilo).
- Cost. Anthropic’s April change made OpenClaw dearer for Claude subscribers. Semafor cited “steep token costs” behind fading interest in China, where a tech outlet called OpenClaw a “relic of the past” (Semafor).
- Others took the idea. PCWorld’s Patterson argued the fade “didn’t happen because it was hard to use or too dangerous”, but because competitors took its best features.
- The hype ran ahead of the product. As early as February 16, Huntress’s John Hammond told TechCrunch that “OpenClaw is still just a wrapper to ChatGPT, or Claude” (TechCrunch).
What no credible outlet blames is Steinberger’s move to OpenAI; the only place that argument turned up in our research was a personal blog. The timing argues against it too. He announced the move on February 15, and searches stayed at their peak through March. The steep drop began in April, the month of Anthropic’s change and the faulty releases, though the data can’t separate one cause from another.
Where it stands in October 2026
- Releases are faster, not slower. GitHub lists 267 releases as of October 20. Five stable versions shipped between October 10 and 18 (v2026.10.1 to v2026.10.5), plus extended-stable patches and betas, against roughly one stable release a week in June (GitHub).
- 2.0 shipped. OpenClaw 2.0 (release 2026.8.1) came out August 30–31, with 933 contributors, 569 of them first-timers, and more than 16,000 pull requests, per the announcement.
- It has an enterprise story. OpenClaw Enterprise, announced September 29, is free and self-hosted, built with Red Hat and NVIDIA, and in pilots until a 1.0 “later in 2026”. Microsoft’s Autopilot, in preview, runs on OpenClaw.
- It’s still a top-ten app on OpenRouter. Ninth by tokens for the month and seventh for the week, but listed among the fastest growing that week, up 13% (OpenRouter apps).
- Star growth has flattened. From September 2 (388,577, per Star History) to October 20 (392,933, per the GitHub API), OpenClaw gained about 4,400 stars, roughly 90 a day; in January it gained 50,000 in three days. Hermes Agent gained about 15,700 over the same 48 days (239,699 to 255,399).
- Search interest has leveled off. 74,000 US searches in both August and September.
Put together, that looks less like a dead project than one past its hype: fewer spectators, a funded team, enterprise pilots and a strong rival. Whether it suits you is a separate question; start with what OpenClaw is and what it costs to run.
FAQ
Who founded OpenClaw?
Peter Steinberger, who started it in November 2025 as a weekend hack called WhatsApp Relay. The credits page lists him as creator.
Who owns OpenClaw?
The OpenClaw Foundation, a US 501(c)(3) non-profit announced on July 8, 2026 and chaired by Dave Morin. The code is MIT-licensed, with copyright held by the foundation, which employs the core team and signs releases.
Is OpenClaw owned by OpenAI?
No. OpenAI employs Steinberger and is a major donor, but the foundation says donors, OpenAI included, don’t own or direct the project (FAQ). Steinberger still makes the technical calls.
Why was OpenClaw renamed?
It was called Clawd (released as Clawdbot), a pun on Claude, until Anthropic’s legal team “politely asked us to reconsider” in late January 2026. The stopgap name, Moltbot, lasted two days; OpenClaw was announced on January 29 after trademark searches came back clear.
Is OpenClaw dead?
No. It shipped five stable releases between October 10 and 18, 2026, launched 2.0 in August and Enterprise pilots in September, and still draws about 74,000 US searches a month. Its hype has faded, and Hermes Agent now leads it on OpenRouter.