OpenClaw Origin: Major Tech Companies Haven't Followed Up in Half a Year, Steinberger Built a Prototype in One Hour and Got Deeper Into It

CoinNetwork · 2026-03-20T10:48:09+00:00

OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger shared the origin story of his project at a Sequoia Capital event. He initially conceived the idea of enabling AI to remotely execute tasks last May, but shelved it due to concerns that big tech companies would realize it first. Frustration in November prompted him to take action, ultimately leading to the development of OpenClaw, an open-source AI framework.

CoinNetwork

2026-03-20 10:48:09

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Crypto World News reports that according to 1M AI News monitoring, Peter Steinberger, the founder of the open-source AI agent framework OpenClaw, shared the story of how this project was born at an event hosted by Sequoia Capital. He recalled that in May last year, he had the idea of enabling AI to receive remote commands and perform tasks on his behalf when he was away from his computer. However, he dismissed the idea at the time, thinking, “Big companies will definitely do this, so why hasn’t anyone done it yet?”

Months later, in November, the same scenario occurred again. He was away from his computer but urgently wanted to send a command to it. The frustration became overwhelming: “Why haven’t I started working on this yet? It’s not that hard.” He traced this impulse back to his mindset when he first 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’re deeply involved that we realize we can’t step away.”

This time, he didn’t wait. He built a prototype on the spot, completing it within an hour. Although the functionality was limited, he continued to invest in it, delving deeper and becoming more entangled. Eventually, this “rabbit hole” evolved into today’s OpenClaw.

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