OpenClaw Foundation Launches With OpenAI, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Tencent as Sponsors
“OpenAI hired me, not OpenClaw. The OpenClaw Foundation is independent, with sponsors rather than owners — and, for the first time, a full-time team keeping the claw alive and stable.” With these words, Austrian entrepreneur Peter Steinberger today announced the official launch of the long-trailed OpenClaw Foundation for his open-source project.
Six months ago, OpenClaw was a single “claw” and a Discord server at founder Peter Steinberger’s home in Austria — a weekend project that came about because, by his own account, he was annoyed it didn’t yet exist. According to the organization, 4.5 million new claws are now being created every week, and the associated repository is said to be the fastest-growing in GitHub’s history.
Legal Structure and Goals
The OpenClaw Foundation is organized as a 501(c)(3) non-profit under U.S. law and, by its own description, serves a global community. The structure is meant to reflect what the project has been all along: open, independent, and community-driven. As models, the foundation cites established open-source projects such as Linux, Apache, and Mozilla, each backed by a neutral steward. The goal, it says, is to keep OpenClaw MIT-licensed, open, and independent.
Founder Peter Steinberger continues to make the decisions, especially the technical ones, according to the announcement. Steinberger joined OpenAI earlier this year; he continues to steward OpenClaw as an open and independent project, and OpenAI has committed to keeping it that way. The foundation sees its role in governance, funding, and paying the staff.
“Switzerland of AI”
As a longer-term goal, the foundation states that OpenClaw should become the “Switzerland of AI” — neutral ground where different models and labs can plug in and collaborate on standards together in the era of agents. Work to this end is already underway in foundation-convened councils on agent identity, agent profiles, evaluation, and enterprise deployment.
For the first time, OpenClaw has built a full-time team that is set to keep growing. According to the foundation, it is made up of open-source maintainers from the worldwide community. On the engineering side are Vincent Koc (Chief Architect), Josh Avant, Patrick Erichsen, Dallin Romney, Jason Sy, and Gideon Adegbesan. On the operations side, Jen Vescio handles partnerships, Matt Jasie finance, Hannes Rudolph community, and Kelly Pike recruiting. The team is rounded out by volunteer maintainers and contributors.
OpenAI, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Tencent as Sponsors
The foundation names numerous partners from the technology industry and academia.
OpenAI, by its own account, supports inference, contributed to hardening the platform with “Codex Security,” and set up “Claw Labs,” an internal team led by Steinberger. As a donor, OpenAI has committed to supporting the foundation’s work.
NVIDIA unveiled “NemoClaw” at its GTC developer conference, which installs OpenClaw along with open Nemotron models and the OpenShell runtime via a single command, allowing a private claw to run on one’s own hardware. Companies such as Cadence, Siemens, Synopsys, and Dassault Systèmes are already using the technology. NVIDIA chief Jensen Huang declared at GTC: “Every company in the world today needs to have an OpenClaw strategy.”
Microsoft announced “Microsoft Scout” at its Build conference — always-on agents with their own identity, based on open-source OpenClaw technology. Microsoft chief Satya Nadella described the product as the first in a line of “enterprise-grade claws.” Microsoft is said to contribute directly to the upstream project.
The University of Michigan became the foundation’s largest donor, according to the organization, and founded the “Institute for Agentic Computing” as an academic hub for research and development around agentic AI, including ties to the government-backed “Genesis Mission.”
Other partners include China’s Tencent (maintainers for security, stability, and ClawHub), Atlassian and other enterprise partners (deployment, auditability, identity), as well as Blacksmith, Vercel, Cloudflare, Convex, and GitHub for testing and infrastructure capacity. In total, the foundation says it works daily with more than 30 organizations from AI labs, cloud providers, and platforms. Alongside the University of Michigan and OpenAI, the foundation counts Offline Holdings and the Lobster Computer Company among its major donors.
Ecosystem and Community
According to the foundation, an ecosystem of tools such as ClawSweeper, Crabbox, and Crabfleet has grown up around OpenClaw; the ClawHub platform is used for sharing agent skills. The ClawCon event series reportedly counted 34 events in 16 countries over five months, with nearly 30,000 registrations. The next event is planned for August 11 in Seattle.
The foundation states that many users are writing their own software for the first time with OpenClaw, without having programmed before. It says it intends to continue shipping new features regularly.
