OpenClaw Origin: Major Company Ghosted for Six Months, Steinberger Prototyped in One Hour Dug Deeper

According to 1M AI News monitoring, Peter Steinberger, the founder of the open-source AI Agent framework OpenClaw, recounted the birth of this project at an OpenClaw-themed event hosted by Sequoia Capital. He recalled that the idea was conceived in May of last year to enable AI to receive commands remotely and perform tasks when he was not at his computer. However, at that time, he thought, "Big tech companies will surely do this. Why has no one done it yet?" So, he put the idea aside. Several months later, in November, the same situation arose again. He was away from his computer but urgently wanted to send a command to it. The frustration of not being able to do so anymore overwhelmed him: "Why haven't I started on this yet? How hard could it be?"

He traced this impulse back to his mindset when he entered the industry: "Isn't this what every founder thinks before starting a company? We start a company precisely because we don't know how hard it is. It's only when we are deeply involved that we can't extricate ourselves." This time, he didn't wait any longer and created a prototype on the spot, finishing it within an hour. However, the functionality was limited. So, he continued to invest more time and effort, delving deeper and getting more entangled. Eventually, this "rabbit hole" evolved into today's OpenClaw.