Meta says Muse heavily inspired by open-source OpenClaw
Meta’s head of product at Superintelligence Labs, Nat Friedman, told X that Muse was “definitely heavily inspired as a product by OpenClaw,” while emphasizing that the assistant was built from scratch. Friedman, the former GitHub CEO who joined Meta last year alongside Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, said the team fell in love with OpenClaw and wanted a version that could be scaled to billions…
Key points
- Meta’s Nat Friedman said Muse was “definitely heavily inspired” by OpenClaw but built from scratch.
- Muse hit No. 1 on the U.S. App Store and reportedly outpaces ChatGPT’s launch in market availability.
- OpenClaw’s creator Peter Steinberger is credited for the SOUL.md file that Muse copied almost verbatim.
The claim follows a viral X thread in which AI app co‑founder Ansh Nanda called Muse “literally OpenClaw for normies,” pointing to identical file names and near‑identical content in the SOUL.md configuration file. Friedman did not dispute the similarities, noting that OpenClaw’s creator Peter Steinberger “got those things exactly right.” Muse has recently reached No. 1 on the U.S. App Store and, according to internal data, is outpacing ChatGPT’s launch when platform and market availability are compared directly. A Meta spokesperson declined further comment beyond Friedman’s statement.
Meta admits Muse’s likeness to OpenClaw isn’t a coincidence
techcrunch.com · 22 September 2026
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