China’s tech firms feast on OpenClaw as companies race to deploy AI agents

China is rapidly embracing the popular artificial intelligence tool OpenClaw, with major tech companies and even local governments rushing to expand access to the lobster-themed, open-source AI agent in recent weeks. 

AI agents are digital assistants that can handle tasks such as sending emails, scheduling meetings and booking restaurant reservations with minimal human guidance. Unlike chatbots that simply respond to prompts, AI agents can take proactive actions, which often require broader access to data and systems, raising privacy and security concerns.

Chinese tech giant Tencent said Tuesday it had launched a full suite of easy-to-use AI products built on OpenClaw, which it dubbed “lobster special forces” and compatible with its popular superapp WeChat.

The same day, startup Zhipu AI launched its own local version of OpenClaw, offering an AI agent pre-installed with over 50 popular skills through “one-click installation.”

Similar moves by other Chinese companies have helped drive consumer interest, with usage of OpenClaw in China surpassing the U.S., according to American cybersecurity firm SecurityScorecard.

“In terms of adopting the new technologies, I think China definitely has a really large community that always wants to try what’s there, what’s new, and don’t want to be left behind,” said Jaylen He, CEO of Violoop, a Shenzhen-based startup building a device that claims to have similar features to OpenClaw but with lower security risks.

“I have friends who are not even in the tech industry … they are doing this, they are also running it,” he said.

As China’s economy continues to face headwinds, OpenClaw offers an opportunity that domestic tech companies, eager to attract paying users, are rushing to capture.

The nationwide OpenClaw craze has boosted the popularity of Chinese-developed large language models, said Winston Ma, adjunct professor at NYU School of Law.

Autonomous AI agents like OpenClaw are typically model-agnostic, which means they can be integrated with various large language models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude.

According to OpenRouter, a startup offering developers access to AI models through a single interface, the top three tools used by OpenClaw users on its marketplace in the past month were all Chinese companies, with combined usage double that of the three most-used Google Gemini and Anthropic Claude models.

Chinese-made AI models released this year have increasingly narrowed the gap with their U.S. rivals, while offering AI capabilities at a fraction of the price.

That significantly lowers the bill for users running OpenClaw. First launched in November, the tool allows users to send requests through popular messaging apps such as Telegram and WhatsApp, enabling the AI agent to perform multiple tasks autonomously. The Austrian…