John Battelle’s Post

Dude - error. OpenClaw was not sold to OpenAI. Pete took a job there, but kept OpenClaw in a non-profit foundation led by nobody less than David Morin

We've seen this plot before, but not executing at this speed.

Your skepticism is well put and warranted. Interestingly, the walled gardens - long before they became walled gardens - laid the groundwork for their own oligopoly. By simplifying magical activities (e.g., creating and finding websites) they helped prompt a tsunami of new things to be found. They then became the complexity management tools for the new wealth they created. You can easily see that happening with the agent explosion. ON THE OTHER HAND: The difference might be that the Web boomed specifically because it enabled outbound communication. Agentification (certainly of the Open Claw type) is more about labor of various sorts, including but not at all limited to communication. So it might not lend itself so readily to a complexity management oligopoly. The App Store duopoly stands as a counter-example, of course. Then again, because the real promise of agentification (per Open Claw) is a DIY builder ethic, there might yet be hope.

Such a profound and timely reminder, John Battelle The 'Early Web' nostalgia is real with OpenClaw, but your warning about the inevitable 'corporate encore' is vital. The real 'Progress' in this AI era shouldn't just be about Tinkering, but about building Resilient Governance that protects user-controlled systems from being swallowed by the same old centralized playbooks. If we want a different ending to this movie, we need to move from pure innovation to Digital Sovereignty by design. We cannot afford to let the 'open' nature of today become the 'walled garden' of tomorrow

Things are frothy and optimistic still, but I can see the cracks forming on the edge of the ensuing troughy times. And some folks have Wile E. Coyote vibes that are no match for gravity. Q1 2026 is all about sham compliance certification accusations hitting Delve, fabricated ARR admissions by Cluely, and foundational LLMs delivering features daily that either wipe out startups or give rise to "oh... I have an idea!" solutions looking for problems. Let's not forget about the Forbes list's uncanny ability to out-predict the prediction markets.

"Early enthusiasm for something new ... always consolidates into the hands of ruthlessly capital-efficient corporations" I would add much of crypto to that list (Wall Street on a blockchain). However, I wonder who will be the first to ask OpenClaw to create a self-healing platform-shifting DAO that can't be compromised. Maybe someone reading this comment will crack open a new trend.

It is an exciting era of tinkering and this is a good long POV on the fact that this could also result in a re-corporating or consolidation at the end of all of this.

John — this is smart and somewhat tragic. The cycles of creative destruction appear to be accelerating.