Peter Steinberger, the Austrian developer who created the open-source AI agent platform OpenClaw, has been named to Fast Company’s AI 20 for 2026, a list spotlighting the year’s most influential technologists, entrepreneurs, and creative thinkers in artificial intelligence.
From Side Project to 500,000 Installations
OpenClaw launched in November 2025. Seven months later, roughly 500,000 systems run it globally, according to Fast Company’s profile by senior writer Mark Sullivan. The platform has accumulated over 240,000 GitHub stars, and a San Francisco event drew 1,300 registrations for a venue that held 500 people.
The growth story is unusually organic. Steinberger had about 50,000 followers on X when he first shared the project. The response, by his own admission, was flat. “It almost felt like a challenge: why can’t I explain how awesome this is?” he told Fast Company.
What changed was a shift from telling to showing. Steinberger set up a public Discord server and worked in the open, automating his house, debugging problems, and throwing “weird problems” at the agent while people watched. “I just worked in public, and people could observe me improving my agent,” he said.
The User Base That Surprised Its Creator
Early adoption skewed toward AI researchers, but the audience broadened fast. Fast Company notes that one early user was a dentist. Others built small agent-run businesses: one user had an agent contact local car dealerships to find the best price on a new truck. Research assistants, customer support bots, and marketing pipelines followed.
“I thought a little bit about marketing, but I never imagined that it would go off like this,” Steinberger told the magazine.
The OpenAI Chapter
In February 2026, Steinberger joined OpenAI, where he works across product teams including Codex on agent and multiagent systems. He announced the move on his blog, writing that OpenClaw would transition to a foundation and remain open-source and independent. The platform continues to operate on that basis.
The Shelf Life of “State of the Art”
Steinberger’s closing note to Fast Company was characteristically blunt about the pace of change. “We are in weird times,” he said. “Things are progressing so fast.”
The AI 20 recognition places Steinberger alongside other technologists and entrepreneurs shaping the field in 2026. For OpenClaw, it marks a particular milestone: a platform that grew almost entirely through public demonstration and community word-of-mouth earning institutional validation from a major business publication less than eight months after launch.