[devhouse]

The specifics are crazier than most people realize. During the rename chaos, Steinberger called Altman to check if "Open"Claw was safe to use. That one phone call became the relationship that became the deal.

Before the forced rename, Claude was the default model, and Anthropic's own Constitutional AI research had inspired soul.md. The trademark enforcement accidentally created the introduction.

The part not getting enough attention is the governance gap, like the MIT license, foundation format, no IP transfer, etc. Good on paper. But the foundation hasn't formed yet, no board members, no governance documents, no clarity on trademark ownership or on the contractual rights OpenAI holds.

I mapped out every confirmed term and every undisclosed detail here: https://www.everydev.ai/p/blog-openclaw-joins-openai-who-own...