What's worth more to OpenAI right now than another model upgrade?

OpenAI just hired Peter Steinberger (the creator of Clawdbot, briefly Moltbot, now OpenClaw) to build its next generation of personal agents. What they build next feeds into ChatGPT's 800-million-strong user base.

A chess move ahead of what could be the largest tech IPO in history.

ChatGPT's lock-in is surprisingly thin. Custom GPTs never became the App Store, memory is shallow, and most users could switch to Claude or Gemini tomorrow and lose nothing. That's a problem when you're laying the groundwork for a potential trillion-dollar listing.

It's also a problem because the labs are "speciating". Anthropic owns developers and is eating enterprise. OpenAI's strength is consumer reach. But reach without depth is just a number.

Agents fix that. When your AI manages your calendar, triages your email, books your travel, and remembers six months of your habits, you're not switching that easily. The switching cost becomes your entire workflow, NOT a $20 subscription.

But here's a catch. OpenClaw has security loopholes. Insecure defaults, exposed instances, one-click exploits, and more. Yet the user base grows.

Steinberger built something people desperately want, he did not build it to be safe.

That's exactly why OpenAI hired the person, not just the project. The vision is proven. The product-market fit is undeniable. What it needs now is enterprise-grade security, a trust layer, and distribution at scale, things OpenAI can actually provide. As Steinberger notes: "My next mission is to build an agent that even my mum can use."

Now connect the dots to the Jony Ive–designed AI device OpenAI is building.

Every piece of hardware needs a soul. An always-on personal agent that knows you, learns you, and acts for you is the killer app that justifies an entirely new device category.

Zoom out further. One person built OpenClaw. One developer, shipping fast, with AI tools doing the work that used to require a team of fifty. The result was an ecosystem so valuable that the most powerful AI company on earth made it a strategic priority. That's a preview.

The barrier between a solo builder and a billion-dollar outcome is collapsing in real time. The real differentiators won't be marginal gains on fast-saturating benchmarks.

OpenAI's bet with this move is simple: AI agents become the operating system, the substrate for the future.

Until next time,

Ram

PS — Steinberger reportedly turned down Meta. What won him over: early access to unreleased research and frontier compute. What counts as a talent differentiator is changing rapidly. It's no longer just comp and title, it's access to the best tools on earth.

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Ram Srinivasan MIT Alum | Author, The Conscious Machine | Global Future of Work and AI Adoption Leader published in Business Insider, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, MIT Executive Viewpoints and more.

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Ram Srinivasan currently serves as an Innovation Strategist and Transformation Leader, authoring groundbreaking works including "The Conscious Machine" and the upcoming "The Exponential Human."

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