The spotlight on OpenClaw grew brighter after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman spent billions to acquire its creator, Peter Steinberger, and bring the project under OpenAI’s umbrella. Despite the acquisition, OpenClaw remains open source, ensuring its influence continues across the industry. Huang acknowledged Altman’s move as a pivotal moment, saying companies can’t ignore the “OpenClaw moment.” At Nvidia’s 2026 GTC conference in San Jose, CEO Jensen Huang urged companies around the world to prepare for the rise of AI agents. “Every company in the world today needs to have an OpenClaw strategy, an agentic system strategy. This is the new computer,” Huang said, referencing the open-source AI agent platform that has rapidly gained traction in Silicon Valley. According to a report by Bloomberg, Huang has compared OpenClaw formerly known as Clawbot and Moltbolt to transformative technologies like Windows, Linux, Kubernetes and HTML, saying that it gave the industry ‘exactly what it needed at the exact time’. He also stressed on the fact that its role in enabling personal AI agents, calling the implications ‘incredible’.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also acknowledged security risks
Along with praising the potential of OpenClaw, Huang also acknowledged the security risks. Nvidia has also introduced NemoClaw, its own version of the agent framework, designed with privacy routers and network guardrails to keep AI agents safe inside corporate environments. TO showcase its capabilities, Nvidia hosted a “build-a-claw” event at GTC, allowing attendees to create custom agents.
OpenClaw’s creator Peter Steinberger, now at OpenAI, said in a statement: “With Nvidia and the broader ecosystem, we’re building the claws and guardrails that let anyone create powerful, secure AI assistants.”Beyond agents, Huang unveiled a new inference system incorporating technology from Groq, following Nvidia’s $20 billion deal with the AI chip startup. He also projected $1 trillion in demand for Nvidia’s Blackwell and Rubin chips through 2027, underscoring the company’s confidence in the AI boom.
How OpenAI’s OpenClaw acquisition may be Sam Altman’s biggest agentic AI push
OpenAI recently hired Peter Steinberger, the creator of viral AI agent framework OpenClaw, in what might be the company’s most strategically loaded talent grab this year. The deal hands Sam Altman a ready-made open-source ecosystem, a globally distributed agent platform, and a founder who turned down the chance to build his own company because he thought OpenAI would get him there faster.Altman announced the hire on X on Sunday, saying Steinberger will “drive the next generation of personal agents.” OpenClaw—the open-source tool that lets users spin up AI agents to handle emails, book flights, manage calendars, and talk to each other on a bot-only social network called MoltBook—will move into a foundation structure with continued support from OpenAI.“The future is going to be extremely multi-agent,” Altman wrote. “We expect this will quickly become core to our product offerings.” Context matters here. Anthropic just locked in a $30 billion funding round and ran a Super Bowl ad that went straight at OpenAI. The rivalry has outgrown model wars. What’s at stake now is developer mindshare, agent ecosystems, and control over how autonomous AI actually gets built.
