OpenAI has hired the most sought-after AI developer. Which stocks will benefit from this?

OpenAI, which is planning an initial public offering later this year, has hired Peter Steinberger, founder of curmudgeonly AI agent OpenClaw (formerly Moltbot). OpenClaw, which lets you control personalized agents via messengers, Barron's calls OpenClaw the most successful independent AI project in recent months, and Steinberger himself "the most sought-after AI developer in the world." His appointment could be good news for public companies that have invested in OpenAI or depend on its spending.

OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Steinberger will work on the next generation of "personal agents" - artificial intelligence that can take instructions and perform multi-step tasks for users.

"[Steinberger] is a genius with a lot of amazing ideas about the future of very smart agents interacting with each other to perform extremely useful tasks for humans," Altman wrote on social network X. - We expect this to quickly become a key part of our product offerings."

AI agents have long been seen as the next stage in the industry's evolution after the huge success of chatbots and image and video generation tools, Barron's explains.

OpenAI is losing its leadership in the industry in the eyes of investors due to the success in AI development of competitors such as Anthropic, Barron's explains. Both companies are moving toward an IPO. Any moves that could strengthen OpenAI's position are good news for companies dependent on its spending. Most notably cloud computing vendors Oracle and CoreWeave, as well as major investors Microsoft and SoftBank Group, the publication says.

OpenAI is currently valued at about $500 billion and is likely in talks to raise $100 billion in a pre-IPO funding round as early as the fourth quarter of this year.

OpenClaw was launched in November. The startup went viral: users began demonstrating on social networks what OpenClaw products could do. They allow you to control personalized AI agents and interact with them via messengers, from iMessage and WhatsApp to Slack and Signal.

Steinberger had to change the name from the original Clawdbot due to possible associations with Anthropic's Claude AI models - first to Moltbot and then finally to OpenClaw.

Steinberger and Altman said that OpenClaw will open up the source code. That is, it will allow users to modify the product to suit their needs. OpenAI will continue to support OpenClaw.

"It will remain a place for thinkers, hackers, and people who want to be able to own their data in order to support even more models and companies," Steinberger wrote on the OpenClaw website.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor