According to a report from The Information, OpenClaw's frequent software updates are creating stability headaches. Major companies building products on the platform—including Nvidia, ByteDance (the parent company of TikTok), and Tencent—are still stuck on an old version from early March, afraid that upgrading could trigger serious technical failures. The OpenClaw maintainers have started helping these companies migrate, and some began rolling out updates over the past week, but a full transition is expected to take more time.
Founder Peter Steinberger was hired by OpenAI in February, but the company gave him ample time to continue leading OpenClaw's development. He's also been fundraising for the OpenClaw Foundation, which was announced that same month.
There's a growing rift within the maintainer team about the project's direction. One faction wants to introduce traditional product management practices—predictable release cycles, strict quality assurance, and formal coordination with enterprise users. The other side worries that adding those processes will stifle the project's innovative, experimental spirit. Last week, OpenClaw held a "no new features" week, focusing solely on improving speed and stability. "We want to increase stability so users aren't scared of updates," said Gustavo Madeira Santana, a maintainer and Yale neuroscience PhD student.
Anthropic's new pricing rules are adding another layer of pain for users. Noam Schwartz, co-founder and CEO of cybersecurity firm Alice, said that under the new structure, using Anthropic's models with third-party tools like OpenClaw could turn a monthly $200 subscription cost into a daily $200 expense. OpenClaw is now steering users toward OpenAI's models instead. On the competitive front, rival project Hermes from Nous Research has recently surpassed OpenClaw in GitHub contributor count. NPM data shows OpenClaw's average weekly downloads have fallen by about half since their mid-March peak.
For financial support, Tencent has agreed to donate to the OpenClaw Foundation. OpenAI also offered a donation, but Steinberger turned it down. OpenAI did, however, help with the foundation's paperwork and provided maintainers with Codex usage credits. GitHub and Convex have also given the maintainers free services.