{"id":289522,"date":"2026-02-18T06:32:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T06:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/289522\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T06:32:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T06:32:12","slug":"openclaw-creator-slams-europes-regulations-as-he-moves-to-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/289522\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenClaw Creator Slams Europe’s Regulations As He Moves to the US"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Europe, there’s been a lot of handwringing over why there are very few large, successful tech companies in the region. Peter Steinberger<\/a>, the creator of the agentic AI hit OpenClaw<\/a>, has an answer.<\/p>\n

Steinberger was recently hired by OpenAI<\/a> and is moving from Europe to the US. An Austrian by birth, he previously split his time between London and Vienna.<\/p>\n

On X, a professor from a European university asked why Europe couldn’t retain this tech talent.<\/p>\n

Steinberger replied<\/a> that most people in the US are enthusiastic, while in Europe, he’s scolded about responsibility and regulations.<\/p>\n

If he built a company in Europe, he would struggle with strict labor regulations and similar rules, he added.<\/p>\n

At OpenAI, he said most employees work 6 to 7 days a week and are paid accordingly. In Europe, that would be illegal, he added.<\/p>\n

The most valuable company in Europe is Dutch chip-equipment maker ASML, valued at about $550 billion. In contrast, there are 10 US companies worth more than $1 trillion. Most of these are tech companies.<\/p>\n

In 2024, a landmark EU report<\/a> found that the region had fallen behind the US, particularly in innovation. It proposed a series of changes to tackle the problem, but by the end of 2025, few of the recommendations<\/a> had been implemented.<\/p>\n

Steinberger said he was hopeful about EU INC, an effort to create a single corporate legal framework to make it simpler to run a business across the region.<\/p>\n

But this seems to be “fizzling out,” he wrote on X<\/a>. “Watered down, too much egoistic national interest that ultimately hurts everyone.”<\/p>\n

Sign up for BI’s Tech Memo newsletter here<\/a>. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Europe, there’s been a lot of handwringing over why there are very few large, successful tech companies…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,111,139,69,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-289522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}