Openclaw Founder: Not interested in billion-dollar funding; the project must be open source to ensure widespread adoption.

ChainCatcher News, Openclaw founder Peter Steinberger recently confirmed in an interview with Lex Fridman that Openclaw has received multiple acquisition offers from various companies. Regarding potential funding in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, Steinberger stated, “I’m not interested at all. I’ve been a CEO before, and that path would take up all my time and create conflicts of interest, such as prioritizing enterprise versions or modifying open-source licenses, which would harm the community. What I want is completely free and open source without any conditions. Also, relying on donations is simply not sustainable—hot projects like Tailwind are already laying off staff.”

Additionally, Steinberger mentioned that Openclaw is currently losing money. The monthly revenue is between $10,000 and $20,000, but it depends on subsidies for personally maintained projects. Companies like OpenAI provide some support, but it remains unsustainable. Regarding collaboration options with large labs, Steinberger said the core condition is that the project must remain open source, similar to Chrome and Chromium. “This is too important to be entirely handed over to one company. Also, the community atmosphere at ClawCon is especially precious—it’s the enthusiasm you only see in the early days of the internet. I want to bring it to more people. This year marks the beginning of personal agency, and collaborating with labs is the fastest way. I’ve never worked at a big company before and want to experience that.”