OpenClaw ChatGPT moment sparks concern AI models becoming commodities

Three months ago, the tech industry was unaware of a lobster-themed AI coding project being developed by an under-the-radar Austrian software developer.

OpenClaw, as this creation is known, has had such a meteoric rise since then that it took center stage at GTC this week. Nvidia’s Annual conference, where the leader of the world’s most valuable company calls it “the most popular, open-source project in human history.”

“This is definitely the next ChatGPT,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on the sidelines of a developer event in Santa Clara, California. In his keynote, Huang described OpenClaw as the go-to option for building AI agents that can perform tasks such as reconnaissance. eBay He worked to land deals and then bids, which he said “exceeded in a matter of weeks what Linux had done in 30 years.”

This event is so important to Nvidia that the chipmaker said it is developing free security services packaged as NemoClaw to encourage greater adoption of OpenClaw in GTC and make it comfortable for large enterprises.

Huang was confirming what the rest of the market was witnessing. An independent developer, rather than a giant, value-rich lab like OpenAI or Anthropic, has unveiled the next big thing in AI, and in doing so has exposed a potentially major flaw in the investment thesis behind large language models: They may be commoditizing.

While OpenAI and Anthropic remain extremely popular and continue to develop services that resonate with users, the strength of OpenClaw is that it allows developers and enthusiasts of all stripes to quickly build and manage AI agents from their home computers via online communication channels such as WhatsApp and Telegram.

Some industry experts say OpenClaw’s rise shows that the value in AI has not reached the two leading startups with a combined private market value of more than $1 trillion and their hyperscaler peers.

“It solidified the open source community and proved that fully autonomous AI can be run at home without relying on Magnificent 7 or Big AI,” said David Hendrickson, CEO of consulting firm GenerAIte Solutions. “I suspect this is the black swan moment that most large AI companies fear.”

Developers are turning to Chinese AI models because they are good enough and cheaper than powerful proprietary models like OpenAI, Anthropic and others, Hendrickson said. Google. And because developers use OpenClaw on their personal computers Apple When they used Mac Minis to manage their fleet of always-on AI agents, they discovered it was much more economical than tapping the cloud to access larger models.

“As core models rapidly become commoditized, attention is shifting toward agent frameworks that emphasize autonomy, availability, locality, and control to power agency AI applications and support business values,” said Charlie Dai, a Forrester analyst.

OpenAI and Anthropic are aware of the threat.

Anthropic is releasing new OpenClaw-like features. channels tool.

And on a Sunday last month Publish on XOpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that OpenClaw developer Peter Steinberger will join the AI ​​company and that the service he created will “live on a foundation as an open source project that OpenAI will continue to support.”

Altman called Steinberger “a genius with many amazing ideas” and said he would help “guide the next generation of personal representatives.”

Cohen and his brother have since shut down their AI marketing firm and founded a new startup called NanoCo, which will offer paid services to accompany NanoClaw and partner Last week, the container technology company cemented itself as an OpenClaw rival with Docker.

David Bader, director of the Data Science Institute at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, said the tech industry is “witnessing a classic platform shift,” with key models and Chinese labs “converging in terms of talent.”

“Models become the engine; the representative framework becomes the car,” Bader said.

Representatives from OpenAI and Anthropic had no comment for this story.

Not everyone in the tech industry believes that core models are losing their power.

Greylock venture capitalist Jerry Chen, an anthropic investor, said OpenClaw’s success in showing what a world of “intelligent agents” might look like doesn’t negate the importance of its underlying foundational models, which he still sees as stronger than so-called models. open weight alternatives.

“The excitement around OpenClaw stems from making AI more tangible for a broader audience beyond researchers and technologists,” Chen said. “The interesting question now is whether OpenClaw has become the de facto standard (the Linux of the market, as Jensen puts it) or whether it is just the first of many open and closed source brokered operating systems.”

For a Wall Street analyst who follows Nvidia, the OpenClaw moment is historic in its seriousness.

Seaport Research Partners’ Jay Goldberg is the only Nvidia analyst among nearly 70 analysts tracked by FactSet with a sell recommendation on the stock. HE launched He broke the news in April after the stock soared after the AI ​​boom, but shares have continued to rally and are up more than 60% since the sell note.

“Part of my criticism of Nvidia has always been: What’s the point of all this AI? There’s no consumer use case for any of this,” Goldberg said. “I’ve always expressed my assessment by saying: Look, if someone comes up with a truly incredible application of AI, I might be wrong.”

After playing with OpenClaw on his recently purchased Mac Mini, Goldberg said he could finally understand the excitement.

As a parent of three children, Goldberg said she receives an average of 10 emails a week and is afraid to read them, longing for a representative to scan the messages and tell her important things, like picking up her kids from school early or getting them dressed for picture day.

“It’s not just the functionality of the object, but what we allow it to access are the parts of our lives,” Goldberg said.

Goldberg isn’t ready to upvote Nvidia, but he admitted he’s “jealous” of Huang, who he said was “successful” in describing OpenClaw as an operating system. Meanwhile, Goldberg said he’s watched tons of TikTok videos on OpenClaw and wants to understand it better before he feels confident enough to actually incorporate it into his life.

“It’s cumbersome, it’s incredibly insecure, and it’s like my Mac Mini is half-functioning,” Goldberg said of OpenClaw’s growing problems. “It’s easy to see how this could be really powerful and really useful.”

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