OpenClaw Creator Peter Steinberger: "2026 Is the Year of Agents"
In a wire interview conducted at a Tokyo gathering of OpenClaw enthusiasts and distributed globally by AFP, Peter Steinberger — the project's creator and now an OpenAI employee leading personal agent development — made his most direct public declaration yet: 2026 is the year of agents. Speaking candidly about how the project began as a personal side experiment in November 2025 to help organize his own digital life, Steinberger reflected on what he sees as the structural advantage of scrappy, individual-driven development. "Those big companies would have worried too much about what could go wrong," he told AFP — a line that cuts to the heart of why open-source agents like OpenClaw have moved faster than their corporate counterparts despite far fewer resources.
The interview is the most prominent earned-media moment OpenClaw has generated in this cycle. Steinberger addresses Jensen Huang's recent comparison of OpenClaw to "the next ChatGPT" with characteristic understatement, while also acknowledging the cybersecurity concerns that have followed the project's rapid growth. His move to OpenAI — where he is now focused on personal agent development — positions him as a rare figure with credibility in both the scrappy open-source world and the institutional AI establishment, and AFP's global distribution means this interview will reach audiences far beyond the developer community that has driven OpenClaw's growth to date.
For anyone tracking how AI agent narratives get formed and spread, this piece is a useful snapshot of the moment: a creator who built something genuinely transformative from personal frustration, now articulating what comes next from inside one of the world's most influential AI labs. The Q2 momentum narrative is now anchored to a named, credible voice.