He said on Lex Fridman podcast that he has no intention of joining any company; that was a couple days ago.
It sounded to me like he's choosing between Meta and OpenAI:
where in the podcast (transcript: https://lexfridman.com/peter-steinberger-transcript/) did he say that?
Re:I’m joining OpenAI
by teaearlgraycold on Sunday February 15, 2026 @05:38PM
(#47028451)
Ah but that was before he saw the comp packages. But no judgement. The tool is still open source. Seems like a great outcome for everyone.
Re:I’m joining OpenAI
by buddhistdude on Sunday February 15, 2026 @06:20PM
(#47028808)
Well, things change fast in the age of AI
He had to keep the grift going until the very last minute.
Re:I’m joining OpenAI
by Der_Einzige on Sunday February 15, 2026 @11:14PM
(#47030827)
Lex Friedman is a fraud/charlatan and shouldn’t be listened to.
He literally said the exact opposite.
Re:I’m joining OpenAI
by softwaredoug on Sunday February 15, 2026 @05:43PM
(#47028511)
Frankly, I hope he maximized the amount of money he made. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity. And nobody knows where AI is headed or if OpenAI even will be in existence in a few years given their valuation and the amount of $ they need to burn to keep up.
Personally I'm excited to see what he can do with more resources, OpenClaw clearly has a lot of potential but also a lot of improvements needed for his mum to use it.