🦞 The Inside Story of OpenClaw and Its Founder, Peter Steinberger

Dear Entrepreneur,

Imagine this: You spend 13 years building a company. You bootstrap it from your Vienna apartment. You grow it to 70+ employees. Your code powers PDF functionality on over 1 billion devices. Apple, Dropbox, and Adobe use your technology. You exit for a reported $100 million.

And then... you feel nothing.

Empty. Hollow. Like someone sucked the mojo right out of you.

This is the story of Peter Steinberger, the 44-year-old Austrian developer who went from post-exit burnout to creating the most viral AI project the world has ever seen - a tool so powerful that it triggered personal calls from Mark Zuckerberg and a hiring offer from Sam Altman himself.

Let me paint you a picture of what "success" looked like for Peter in 2023:

After selling his shares in 2023, Peter tried everything to fill the void:

Nothing worked.

Here was a man who had achieved what most entrepreneurs only dream of, and he felt like Austin Powers after Dr. Evil sucked out his mojo. He couldn't get code out anymore. He just stared at the screen, feeling empty.

For Peter, the problem wasn't money. It was purpose.

You see, Peter had poured 200% of his time, energy, and heart's blood into PSPDFKit. He was the guy who bootstrapped a PDF framework while waiting six months for a U.S. work visa. The company had become his identity.

And when that identity was stripped away? He discovered what many successful founders never talk about: the crushing weight of purposelessness that comes after selling your dream.

Fast forward to April 2025.

Peter was watching the AI revolution unfold from the sidelines. Everyone was talking about ChatGPT, Claude, and the future of AI agents. And something inside him stirred.

He had a simple idea: What if he could build an AI agent that actually DID things instead of just chatting?

"I was annoyed that it didn't exist, so I just prompted it into existence." — Peter Steinberger

On a random day in late 2025, Peter sat down at his computer and built the first prototype of what would become OpenClaw.

It took him exactly one hour.

Let that sink in. One hour to build the prototype that would eventually become the fastest-growing open-source project in GitHub history.

Unlike traditional AI chatbots that sit and wait for your commands, OpenClaw was autonomous. It could:

But here's the crazy part: This wasn't just another side project for Peter. It was his 44th AI-related project since 2009. He'd been quietly tinkering with AI for over a decade while everyone else was just discovering ChatGPT.

Peter's journey wasn't smooth. The project went through multiple identity crises:

Each rebrand brought chaos. Bad actors associated with cryptocurrency briefly hijacked his accounts during one transition. Peter was so exhausted he almost deleted the entire project.

But he didn't quit. And thank God for that.

Here's where the story gets really interesting.

By early 2026, OpenClaw was exploding. GitHub stars were accumulating at a pace never seen before. The tech world was going absolutely bonkers over this AI agent framework.

But Peter had a problem: He was losing between $10,000 to $20,000 per month just keeping the servers running.

Think about that for a second. Here's a project with:

And every major AI company in the world wanted a piece of it.

Peter suddenly found himself in a position most founders would kill for: a bidding war between tech titans.

Mark Zuckerberg reached out personally. During a podcast with Lex Fridman, Zuck actually tested OpenClaw live and gave Peter feedback. "That was a good first start," Zuckerberg said; high praise from someone who's built one of the world's largest tech companies.

Meta made an offer. Anthropic was interested. Various VCs were circling. Everyone wanted to know: What would Peter do?

On February 15, 2026, Peter made his decision: He was joining OpenAI.

Sam Altman announced it with characteristic brevity on Twitter/X:

But here's the twist that makes this story so compelling for entrepreneurs: Peter didn't sell out.

Instead of letting OpenAI acquire OpenClaw, Peter negotiated something unprecedented:

Now here's where things get REALLY fascinating for those of us who build things.

Peter doesn't code the way you do. He doesn't code the way anyone does.

In January 2026 alone, Peter made over 6,600 commits to the OpenClaw repository. To put that in perspective, that's more commits in one month than most developers make in an entire year.

Let that headline sink in for a moment.

Peter Steinberger, the guy who built software running on a billion devices, openly admits: "I ship code I don't read."

Here's his actual workflow:

Peter isn't just using AI as a coding assistant. He's operating like a one-person tech company by treating AI agents as his distributed engineering team.

Here are his key insights that you can steal:

Okay, so we've covered a lot. But let's bring this back to what matters for YOU as an entrepreneur or startup founder.

What can you actually LEARN from Peter's journey?

Peter spent THREE YEARS wandering in the wilderness after his exit. Three years of therapy, ayahuasca, country-hopping, and existential emptiness.

The startup world glorifies the exit. We talk about "making it." But we don't talk about the crushing emptiness that can follow when your purpose disappears overnight.

OpenClaw was Peter's 44th AI project. Think about that. 43 projects that nobody talks about. 43 experiments that didn't go viral. 43 attempts that taught him exactly what he needed to know to make #44 explode.

The media narrative is "developer builds AI agent in 1 hour, gets hired by OpenAI." The reality is "developer spends 15+ years mastering his craft, builds 44th project in 1 hour, recognition follows."

Peter made OpenClaw completely open-source and free. He lost $10-20K per month running it. It had no revenue model.

And yet, it became one of the most valuable assets in the AI ecosystem.

Why? Because distribution beats monetization in the early stages of a paradigm shift.

OpenAI didn't hire Peter for the code. They hired him for the vision, the community, and the proof that people want autonomous agents.

Peter demonstrated something that will define the next decade of entrepreneurship: One person with AI agents can now do what used to require a team of 20+ engineers.

He made 6,600 commits in a month. He built a framework with 196,000 GitHub stars. He created a tool with 2 million weekly users. BY HIMSELF.

This isn't theoretical. This is happening RIGHT NOW.

2010: You need 10 engineers to build a competitive SaaS product

2020: You need 3-5 engineers with modern frameworks and cloud tools

2026: You need 1 person with AI agents and the right architecture

The question for every entrepreneur: Are you building your business for the 2020 reality or the 2026 reality?

Peter built in public. He shared his journey. He was honest about his struggles with burnout and finding purpose again.

When OpenClaw exploded, it wasn't just the tool that people connected with—it was Peter's story.

That narrative is what got Mark Zuckerberg to reach out. That's what convinced Sam Altman to make the hire. The code was impressive, but the founder was magnetic.