Austrian causes a stir in Silicon Valley with AI agents

Berlin, Düsseldorf. Peter Steinberger hasbuilt an AI agent that is currently inspiring the development scene. Open Claw is "like a ghost that sits in front of a computer and can do everything a person does", Steinberger told Handelsblatt in his first interview with a German medium.

The Austrian explains why his project has achieved in weeks what corporations need months or years for - and announces his move to San Francisco. However, security experts warn that the system can be easily manipulated.

His life changed about a fortnight ago. He can hardly keep up with the messages and calls, says Steinberger. What began as a hobby quickly became one of the most frequently used programme codes on the developer platform Github and has already been used more than 160,000 times by developers.

Open Claw is not a simple AI chatbot. It is an AI agent that performs tasks independently - a digital assistant that not only answers, but acts.

The agent accepts commands via messenger services such as WhatsApp or Telegram. It researches, writes programme code and operates computers like a human. Many developers see this as what big tech companies have been promising for months: functioning, useful AI agents.

What characterises Open Claw

The hype has now reached the cloud providers. Several platforms already offer Open Claw as a service, including the Chinese providers Tencent Cloud and Alibaba Cloud. Users can start the agent there with just a few clicks without having to install it themselves.

At the same time, dealers in Silicon Valley are reporting a sharp rise in sales of Apple's Mac mini computer, according to the Bloomberg news agency. Many users deliberately set up Open Claw on a separate computer in order to limit risks. This is because the system can access sensitive data, process it and carry out actions.