Anthropic briefly suspended OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger’s account for suspicious activity before reinstating it hours later

Anthropic suspended the Claude account of Peter Steinberger, creator of the popular open-source AI agent framework OpenClaw, citing suspicious activity, but reinstated it within hours after Steinberger posted about the ban on X and an Anthropic engineer responded publicly offering to help. The incident follows Anthropic's recent decision to exclude OpenClaw from Claude subscription coverage, requiring users to pay separately via API, a move Steinberger has publicly criticized as timed suspiciously close to Anthropic adding similar features to its own competing Cowork agent. Steinberger, who now works at OpenAI to help with product strategy, said he uses Claude only for testing to ensure OpenClaw compatibility, and told followers when asked why he went to OpenAI instead of Anthropic: “One welcomed me, one sent legal threats.”