China's OpenClaw Craze Buoys Tech Stocks, Fuels AI Pivot

By Sherry Qin and Tracy Qu

China's tech titans are embracing an unlikely outsider: OpenClaw, a project created by an Austrian developer that is making waves across the country.

Last week, a line of people queued outside Tencent Holdings' headquarters in Shenzhen, wanting help installing the artificial-intelligence assistant on their computers.

OpenClaw's emergence marks a pivot from previous consumer-facing AI chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Chinese model DeepSeek, which answer questions, to technology that can also perform tasks.

The open-source AI assistant created by Peter Steinberger can make and carry out decisions on the user's behalf, and has become a hit in China's tech community.

Shares of Tencent rose 7.3% on Tuesday after it launched a suite of OpenClaw-compatible AI products, while shares of startup MiniMax added over 20% as investors expect it to become a key beneficiary to OpenClaw adoption.

The term "raising a lobster" has been trending on Chinese social media, a nod to OpenClaw's lobster logo as users rush to adopt the AI agent, which can do things such as managing calendars, sending emails and research topics on its own.

Chinese tech companies are capitalizing on OpenClaw's popularity to encourage more people to use their own AI models, while also rapidly building out their in-house offerings.

Tencent's Workbuddy can access popular Chinese office and communication tools and perform tasks as the user's request. TikTok parent ByteDance has ArkClaw, a cloud-based OpenClaw tool that requires no installation, while Alibaba developed an AI agent tool named CoPaw, which supports work messaging apps like DingTalk and Feishu.

OpenClaw also supports a number of foundation models created by smaller Chinese companies like Zhipu AI, which on Tuesday launched AutoClaw, software that makes installing OpenClaw as easy as downloading an app.

Even though the program's popularity could well be a fad, it is lifting investor sentiment toward the sector, Morningstar analyst Ivan Su said.

Sheng Fu, chief executive of Beijing-based Cheetah Mobile, thinks the overall trend will endure, as users increasingly view autonomous agents like "digital employees."

Some Chinese local governments have jumped on the bandwagon too, promoting the use of the AI assistant as Beijing pushes to develop cutting-edge tech.

Shenzhen's Longgang district announced a draft policy over the weekend that encourages professional platforms to offer free OpenClaw deployment services and provides subsidies for application development.

The high-tech district of Wuxi in Jiangsu province announced subsidies of between 1 million yuan and 5 million yuan, equivalent to $144,774 to $723,871, to encourage industrial use of OpenClaw.

China has been focusing on wiring AI into all industries and fields to create an "intelligent economy," Macquarie analysts said in a recent note.

Still, the capabilities of AI agentic tools have raised some safety concerns. Chinese officials have warned about potential security issues with OpenClaw, given its autonomous decision-making and ability to access system and external resources.

--Yang Jie contributed to this story

Write to Sherry Qin at sherry.qin@wsj.com and Tracy Qu at tracy.qu@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 10, 2026 05:33 ET (09:33 GMT)