#5: OPENCLAW (formerly Clawdbot) IS A BIG TURNING POINT FOR AI
Clawdbot hijacked everybody's attention. This week, we watched the internet fall in love with a personal AI assistant that got too close to Claude's name. What a messy rebranding!
This post will be intentionally small. I’ve been spending a lot of time IRL learning from a couple of friends’ businesses in Dubai and Tokyo. The jetlag hit weirdly hard. But also, the snow in Japan is on another level. Skiing in that country is a blessing. Also, I’ll share an Anime recommendation later in this post.
The story of Clawdbot OpenClaw is wild. Austrian engineer Peter Steinberger built an open-source, self-hosted AI assistant that went absolutely viral, gaining 60,000+ GitHub stars in 72 hours.
The naming journey has been chaotic. Started as Clawdbot, then Anthropic sent a trademark request. Rebrand to Moltbot but it was a weird change. Now it’s OpenClaw, with trademark searches cleared and domains purchased.
So, OpenClaw. It made me think of reusing an old MacBook at first while traveling. But then I learned you can just use an Amazon or Digital Ocean instance. This bot takes control of that computer, you share some credentials, and it really becomes a great assistant. My favorite part: the agents now have their own social network: Moltbook (I got one agent there already: Valerie). And this is an interesting milestone to delegate a lot of stuff. We had access to browsers, a lot of agent workflows, but now this is just more powerful.
The app is growing a lot of interest from the open source community. It was messy, like a seriously good launch. The excitement of my WhatsApp groups about this project definitely hit an all-time high. If you haven’t tried OpenClaw, I urge you to do it. I also urge you to consider your security. Don’t give it access to all of your credentials, try one thing at a time, imagine the worst-case scenario when you lose control of that machine as an exercise. And I really want to dream of all the good use cases that will come up with that.
Podcast alert: Conversación con Jimena Pardo de Hi Ventures sobre predicciones 2026. Me divertí mucho grabando este episodio. Hablamos del rol de los gobiernos en AI, el nuevo internet para agentes, el futuro de fintech y voz, y por qué Latinoamérica podría dar un salto histórico en digitalización.
A few more things worth reading:
OpenAI needs more money, and Sam is fundraising hard. Reports from WSJ indicate SoftBank is in talks to invest up to $30 billion more in OpenAI, part of a broader $100 billion funding round. But it’s not just SoftBank. Nvidia, Amazon, and Microsoft are also reportedly in talks to participate. This comes after SoftBank already invested $41 billion in 2025. If this goes through, OpenAI’s valuation could hit $830 billion.
Casey Newton breaks down a new Manchester study on social media and teens that claims to find no harm from heavy social media use. The study tracked 25,600 British teens and found no correlation between screen time and depression or anxiety. But the methodology seems flawed. I really believe that we need to protect teens better from this digital drug.
The UAE launched its sovereign AI model K2 Think, positioning itself to counter U.S. and China dominance in AI. Abu Dhabi’s G42 also unveiled a new operating model for states to deploy sovereign AI at scale. We’ve been seeing this trend globally, but the question remains: will people actually use these models?
WhatsApp rolled out “Strict Account Settings,” a high-security mode for journalists, activists, and public figures facing sophisticated cyberattacks. Good to see them taking security seriously for high-risk users.
Tether launched USAT, a new US-focused stablecoin for the gringos. Unlike the global USDT, this one is issued through Anchorage Digital Bank, making it the first federally regulated stablecoin under OCC oversight and competes directly with Circle’s USDC. #cryptocositas
If you’re tired of vibecoding, this post might resonate with you. After two years of AI-assisted development, Mo Bitar returned to writing by hand. Turns out manual coding was faster when accounting for code quality, maintainability, and avoiding technical debt.
Apple acquired Israeli audio AI startup Q.ai for reportedly $2 billion, making it Apple’s second-biggest acquisition ever after Beats. Please make Siri better, dear Tim.
Y para los que les gusta el anime como yo: vi “Look Back” (2024), película con animación hermosa y una historia potente. Muy recomendada. Acá el trailer.
Nos vemos la próxima semana. Written this week from Dubai. What a crazy development and collection of cranes, buildings, and determination to make this a world-class city. It took me a decade to get back, but thanks to the B1M YouTube channel, I got to enjoy a lot of the buildings they review on their channel. And the hummus is the real deal.
Moltbook se esta saliendo de control.
Christian como recomiendas probar MoltBook? tengo muchas ganas de probarlo, pero con lo que está pasando me da bastante susto con la seguridad. No se si mejor esperar una versión más estable.