Anthropic Briefly Banned OpenClaw's OpenAI-Employed Creator

Anthropic suspended OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger's account over suspicious activity, sparking viral backlash and conspiracy theories given his employment at rival OpenAI. The ban was reinstated within hours after an Anthropic engineer publicly offered to help. The incident follows Anthropic's recent decision to bar third-party tools like OpenClaw from Claude subscriptions, forcing users onto paid API access. Steinberger, who claims he was already complying with the new rules, has accused Anthropic of copying open-source features into its own Cowork agent before locking out competitors.