Openclaw Founder: Not Interested in Billions of Dollars in Funding, Project Must Be Open Source to Ensure Universality

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**Feb 13: Openclaw Founder Rejects Big Offers, Prioritizes Open-Source** Openclaw founder Peter Steinberger confirmed in a recent interview with Lex Fridman that the project has fielded acquisition offers from multiple companies. When asked about potential funding in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, he said: *“I’m simply not interested. Having been a CEO before, I know this path would consume all my time and create conflicts of interest—like prioritizing the enterprise edition or changing the open-source license, moves that would harm the community. What I want is unconditionally fully free and open-source software.”* He added donations alone aren’t sustainable, noting even popular projects like Tailwind are laying off staff. Additionally, Steinberger disclosed Openclaw is operating at a loss: monthly revenue ranges from $10,000 to $20,000, but subsidizing personal maintenance for dependent projects (even with support from firms like OpenAI) remains unsustainable. On partnering with large labs, he stressed a non-negotiable condition: the project must stay open-source, like Chrome and Chromium. *“This is too important to hand entirely to one company,”* he said. *“The ClawCon community vibe is precious—it’s like the early internet’s passion. I want to bring it to more people. This year is about personal agency, and labs are the fastest way. I’ve never worked at a big company, so I want to experience that too.”*

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