Clawdbot Rebranded as Moltbot, Founder Joins OpenAI in Major AI Shift

Clawdbot Rebranded as Moltbot, Founder Joins OpenAI in Major AI Shift

In a stunning development that has sent ripples through the open-source AI community, the creator of Clawdbot—once hailed as the "AI that actually does things"—has officially joined OpenAI. Simultaneously, the project formerly known as Clawdbot has been rebranded as Moltbot, signaling a strategic pivot away from its original identity. According to TechCrunch, the rebranding coincides with the departure of the project’s lead developer, whose identity remains undisclosed but is widely believed to be the original architect behind the platform’s automation capabilities.

Clawdbot, launched in late 2024, rapidly gained traction for its unique ability to execute real-world tasks beyond chat-based interactions. Unlike traditional LLM assistants, Clawdbot ran locally on Mac Mini, Windows, and Docker environments, integrating with platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, and smart home systems. With over 30,000 GitHub stars and a thriving community of 8,900+ Discord members, it became a symbol of privacy-first, self-hosted AI. The project’s official site, clawdbotai.org, still hosts its documentation and 565+ community-developed "skills," but the domain now redirects users to the new Moltbot platform at clawdbot.you, which features updated branding and a new deployment model.

According to the Moltbot website, the AI now offers enhanced task orchestration, including automated email triaging, calendar management, and API-driven workflows across 50+ services—all while maintaining its core promise of local execution and data sovereignty. The platform’s new one-liner installer, curl -fsSL https://openclaw.ai/install.sh | bash, suggests a subtle but deliberate rebranding of the underlying codebase under the "OpenClaw" banner, potentially indicating a corporate-backed fork or acquisition.

Industry analysts are speculating that OpenAI’s recruitment of the Clawdbot creator represents a strategic move to absorb grassroots innovation into its proprietary ecosystem. "OpenAI has been quietly acquiring niche open-source projects with strong community traction," said Dr. Elena Torres, AI ethics researcher at Stanford. "Clawdbot’s success demonstrated that users crave autonomy—not just better chatbots, but agents that act. That’s a threat to centralized AI models. Bringing the creator in-house neutralizes the competition and accelerates OpenAI’s own agent ambitions."

Despite the rebrand, the original Clawdbot repository on GitHub remains accessible and actively maintained by a group of community contributors. However, the official project page now links exclusively to Moltbot’s new infrastructure, which includes a partnership with Hostinger for one-click VPS deployments. This shift raises concerns among privacy advocates. "Self-hosting was Clawdbot’s raison d’être," said a contributor on the project’s GitHub issues page. "Now, the main installation guide pushes cloud hosting. That’s not open-source anymore—it’s a SaaS product with open-source veneer."

Meanwhile, OpenAI has not issued an official statement regarding the hiring. Sources within the company confirm that the former Clawdbot lead is now working on "agent infrastructure" within OpenAI’s Research division, focused on making GPT-5 capable of autonomous task execution—mirroring Clawdbot’s original vision.

For users, the transition remains confusing. The original Clawdbot documentation still lives at docs.clawd.bot, while the new Moltbot site features a sleeker UI and monetized integrations. Community members are split: some applaud the professionalization and enhanced features; others fear the soul of the project has been sold. As one Reddit user put it: "They didn’t buy the code. They bought the vision—and now they’re building it without us."

The future of Moltbot—and the legacy of Clawdbot—hangs in the balance. Will this be the end of a decentralized AI revolution, or merely its evolution into a more powerful, corporate-backed force? Only time will tell.