The popularity of OpenClaw, the agent platform that OpenAI acquired, has crystallized another big AI race.
First it was Nvidia, rushing to announce NemoClaw, which markets itself as the security-enhanced version of OpenClaw. Then, Anthropic rushed to push out new features in Claude Cowork — called Dispatch — which lets you message Claude from your phone while it works on your desktop, turning it into a fairly competent AI assistant.
There are signs more agent alternatives are coming. When asked if customers are asking Anthropic to create its own version of OpenClaw, Chief Commercial Officer Paul Smith told Semafor, “They are. Without speculating too much on our product roadmap, [it] evolved pretty quickly.”
While he declined to provide more details, my take was that it was more a matter of when — not if — Anthropic introduces a more direct OpenClaw competitor, or embeds a lot of that stuff into its current products. (Even more details came out when 500,000 lines of Anthropic code were leaked).
“Think of the features that people found useful — the ability to have a whole bunch of agents working on my desktop but remote control from my mobile device,” he said, referring to Dispatch. “The models are getting smarter and they’re coming faster.”
Still, just because Anthropic is moving quickly doesn’t mean its customers can keep up. When asked whether Anthropic’s own customers — big companies and government agencies — can keep up with the pace of change, Smith brought up the analogy: “Rolling out broad-based AI to an entire employee base is like putting a Peloton in everyone’s sitting room. It doesn’t mean everyone’s going to start to get fit.”