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Read more Feng Qingyang had always hoped to launch his own company, but he never thought this would be how—or that the day would come this fast.
Feng, a 27-year-old software engineer based in Beijing, started tinkering with OpenClaw, a popular new open-source AI tool that can take over a device and autonomously complete tasks for a user, in January. He was immediately hooked, and before long he was helping other curious tech workers with less technical proficiency install the AI agent.
Feng soon realized this could be a lucrative opportunity. By the end of January, he had set up a page on Xianyu, a secondhand shopping site, advertising “OpenClaw installation support.” “No need to know coding or complex terms. Fully remote,” reads the posting. “Anyone can quickly own an AI assistant, available within 30 minutes.”
At the same time, the broader Chinese public was beginning to catch on—and the tool, which had begun as a niche interest among tech workers, started to evolve into a popular sensation.
Feng quickly became inundated with requests, and he started chatting with customers and managing orders late into the night. At the end of February, he quit his job. Now his side gig has now grown into a full-fledged professional operation with over 100 employees. So far, the store has handled 7,000 orders, each worth about 248 RMB or approximately $34.
“Opportunities are always fleeting,” says Feng. “As programmers, we are the first to feel the winds shift.”
Feng is among a small cohort of savvy early adopters turning China’s OpenClaw craze into cash. As users with little technical background want in, a cottage industry of people offering installation services and preconfigured hardware has sprung up to meet them. The sudden rise of these tinkerers and impromptu consultants shows just how eager the general public in China is to adopt cutting-edge AI—even when there are huge security risks.
A “lobster craze”
“Have you raised a lobster yet?”
Xie Manrui, a 36-year-old software engineer in Shenzhen, says he has heard this question nonstop over the past month. “Lobster” is the nickname Chinese users have given to OpenClaw—a reference to its logo.
Xie, like Feng, has been experimenting with OpenClaw since January. He’s built new open-source tools on top of the ecosystem, including one that visualizes the agent’s progress as an animated little desktop worker and another that lets users voice-chat with it.
“I’ve met so many new people through ‘lobster raising,’” says Xie. “Many are lawyers or doctors, with little technical background, but all dedicated to learning new things.”
Lobsters are indeed popping up everywhere in China right now—on and offline. In February, for instance, the entrepreneur and tech influencer Fu Sheng hosted a livestream showing off OpenClaw’s capabilities that got 20,000 views. And just last weekend, Xie attended three different OpenClaw events in Shenzhen, each drawing more than 500 people. These self-organized, unofficial gatherings feature power users, influencers, and sometimes venture capitalists as speakers. The biggest event Xie attended, on March 7, drew more than 1,000 people; in the packed venue, he says, people were shoulder to shoulder, with many attendees unable to even get a seat.
Now China’s AI giants are starting to piggyback on the trend too, promoting their models, APIs, and cloud services (which can be used with OpenClaw), as well as their own OpenClaw-like agents. Earlier this month, Tencent held a public event offering free installation support for OpenClaw, drawing long lines of people waiting for help, including elderly users and children.
This sudden burst in popularity has even prompted local governments to get involved. Earlier this month the government of Longgang, a district in Shenzhen, released several policies to support OpenClaw-related ventures, including free computing credits and cash rewards for standout projects. Other cities, including Wuxi, have begun rolling out similar measures.
These policies only catalyze what’s already in the air. “It was not until my father, who is 77, asked me to help install a ‘lobster’ for him that I realized this thing is truly viral,” says Henry Li, a software engineer based in Beijing.
A programmer gold rush
What’s making this moment particularly lucrative for people with technical skills, like Feng, is that so many people want OpenClaw, but not nearly as many have the capabilities to access it. Setting it up requires a level of technical knowledge most people do not possess, from typing commands into a black terminal window to navigating unfamiliar developer platforms. On the hardware side, an older or budget laptop may struggle to run it smoothly. And if the tool is not installed on a device separate from someone’s everyday computer, or if the data accessible to OpenClaw is not properly partitioned, the user’s privacy could be at risk—opening the door to data leaks and even malicious attacks.
Chris Zhao, known as “Qi Shifu” online, organizes OpenClaw social media groups and events in Beijing. On apps like Rednote and Jike, Zhao routinely shares his thoughts on AI, and he asks other interested users to leave their WeChat ID so he can invite them to a semi-private group chat. The proof required to join is a screenshot that shows your “lobster” up and running. Zhao says that even in group chats for experienced users, hardware and cloud setup remain a constant topic of discussion.
The relatively high bar for setting up OpenClaw has generated a sense of exclusivity, creating a natural opening for a service industry to start unfolding around it. On Chinese e-commerce platforms like Taobao and JD, a simple search for “OpenClaw” now returns hundreds of listings, most of them installation guides and technical support packages aimed at nontechnical users, priced anywhere from 100 to 700 RMB (approximately $15 to $100). At the higher end, many vendors offer to come to help you in person.
Like Feng, most providers of these services are early adopters with some technical ability who are looking for a side gig. But as demand has surged, some have found themselves overwhelmed. Xie, the developer in Shenzhen who created tools to layer on OpenClaw, was asked by a friend who runs one such business to help out over the weekend; the friend had a customer who worked in e-commerce and had little technical experience, so Xie had to show up in person to get it done. He walked away with 600 RMB ($87) for the afternoon.
The growing demand has also pushed vendors like Feng to expand quickly. He has now standardized his operation into tiers: a basic installation, a custom package where users can make specific requests like configuring a preferred chat app, and an ongoing tutoring service for those who want a hand to hold as they find their footing with the technology.
Other vendors in China are making money combining OpenClaw with hardware. Li Gong, a Shenzhen-based seller of refurbished Mac computers, was among the first online sellers to do this—offering Mac minis and MacBooks with OpenClaw preinstalled. Because OpenClaw is designed to operate with deep access to a hard drive and can run continuously in the background unattended, many users prefer to install it on a separate device rather than on the one they use every day. This would help prevent bad actors from infiltrating the program and immediately gaining access to a wide swathe of someone’s personal information. Many turn to secondhand or refurbished options to keep the cost down. Li says that in the last two weeks, orders have increased eightfold.
Though OpenClaw itself is a new technology, the general practice of buying software bundles, downloading third-party packages, and seeking out modified devices is nothing new for many Chinese internet users, says Tianyu Fang, a PhD candidate studying the history of technology at Harvard University. Many users pay for one-off IT support services for tasks from installing Adobe software to jailbreaking a Kindle.
Still, not everyone is getting swept up. Jiang Yunhui, a tech worker based in Ningbo, worries that ordinary users who struggle with setup may not be the right audience for a technology that is still effectively in testing.
“The hype in first-tier cities can be a little overblown,” he says. “The agent is still a proof of concept, and I doubt it would be of any life-changing use to the average person for now.” He argues that using it safely and getting anything meaningful out of it requires a level of technical fluency and independent judgment that most new users simply don’t have yet.
He’s not alone in his concerns. On March 10, the Chinese cybersecurity regulator CNCERT issued a warning about the security and data risks tied to OpenClaw, saying it heightens users’ exposure to data breaches.
Despite the potential pitfalls, though, China’s enthusiasm for OpenClaw doesn’t seem to be slowing.
Feng, now flush with the earnings from his operation, wants to use the momentum—and the capital—to keep building out his own venture with AI tools at the center of it.
“With OpenClaw and other AI agents, I want to see if I can run a one-person company,” he says. “I’m giving myself one year.”
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
How Pokémon Go is giving delivery robots an inch-perfect view of the world
Pokémon Go was the world’s first augmented-reality megahit. Released in 2016 by Niantic, the AR twist on the juggernaut Pokémon franchise fast became a global phenomenon. “500 million people installed that app in 60 days,” says Brian McClendon, CTO at Niantic Spatial, an AI company that Niantic spun out last year.
Now Niantic Spatial is using that vast trove of crowdsourced data to build a kind of world model—a buzzy new technology that grounds the smarts of LLMs in real environments. The firm wants to use it to help robots navigate more precisely. Read the full story.
—Will Douglas Heaven
MIT Technology Review Narrated: America was winning the race to find Martian life. Then China jumped in.
In July 2024, after more than three years on Mars, the Perseverance rover came across a peculiar rocky outcrop. Instead of the usual crystals or sedimentary layers, this one had spots. Those specks were the best hint yet of alien life.
NASA began a new mission to bring the rocks back to Earth to study. But now, just over a year and a half later, the project is on life support. As a result, those oh-so-promising rocks may be stuck out there forever.
This also means that, in the race to find evidence of alien life, America has effectively ceded its pole position to its greatest geopolitical rival: China. The superpower is moving full steam ahead with its own version of NASA’s mission.
—Robin George Andrews
This is our latest story to be turned into an MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we’re publishing each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it’s released.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Viral AI fakes of the Iran war are flooding X
And Grok is failing to flag them. (Wired $)
+ The conflict could wreak havoc on data centers and electricity costs. (The Verge)
+ Pro-Iran bots are weaponizing posts about Epstein. (Gizmodo)
+ AI is turning the Iran conflict into a show. (MIT Technology Review)
2 Anthropic fears the loss of billions due to the Pentagon’s blacklisting
That’s what the company has told a judge as it seeks to block its designation as a supply-chain risk. (Bloomberg $)
+ Microsoft has backed the company in its legal fight with the Pentagon. (FT $)
+ OpenAI’s “compromise” with the DoD dealt a big blow to Anthropic. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Meta has bought a social network that’s exclusively for bots
Moltbook is a Reddit-like site where AI agents interact with each other. (NYT $)
+ The platform is AI theater. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Ukraine is eagerly offering the US its expertise and tech to counter Iranian drones
Kyiv has sent drones and UAV specialists to military bases in Jordan. (WSJ $)
+ A radio-obsessed civilian is shaping Ukraine’s drone defense. (MIT Technology Review)
5 OnlyFans “chatters” are earning $2 per hour to impersonate models
A worker in the Philippines described the job as “heartbreaking” and “icky.” (BBC)
6 The DHS has removed officials who objected to “illegal” orders about surveillance tech
The officers had refused to mislabel records about the technologies in order to block their release. (Wired)
7 This startup is building data centers run on brain cells
The “biological data centers” are coming to Melbourne and Singapore. (New Scientist $)
8 Anduril is expanding into space defense
The company is buying ExoAnalytic, which specializes in missile defense tracking. (Reuters)
+ We saw a demo of an AI system powering Anduril’s vision for war. (MIT Technology Review)
9 Big tech has a new big idea: AI compute as compensation
Silicon Valley is pitching it as a job perk. (Business Insider)
10 Wordle’s creator is back with a new game
It’s inspired by cryptic crosswords. (The New Yorker $)
Quote of the day
“You come for the Epstein content, and you stay for the propaganda.”
—Bret Schafer, an expert on information manipulation, tells the Washington Post how pro-Iran networks are gaining traction with posts about Epstein.
One More Thing
MEREDITH MIOTKE | PHOTO: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS
The quest to figure out farming on Mars
If ever a blade of grass grew on Mars, those days are over. But could they begin again? What would it take to grow plants to feed future astronauts on Mars?
To grow food there, we can’t just drop seeds in the ground and add water. We will need to create a layer of soil that can support life. And to do that, we first have to get rid of the red planet’s toxic salts.
Researchers recently discovered a potential solution—and the early signs are promising. Read the full story.
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line)
+ Finally, a rebellion arises against mint’s tyranny over our teeth: Peanut Butter Cup toothpaste.
+ DIY decorators rejoice! The humble paint tray has received an ingeniously simple renovation.
+ Saudi surgeons have successfully separated two conjoined twins.
+ If you’re looking for real innovation, check out British Pie Week’s beef rendang, jerk chicken, and double-size pasties.
The new features, which also include a voiceover teleprompter and personalized sound effects, are part of a swiftly expanding suite of creative options in the app.
The video platform, in partnership with Google.org and The Centre for Public Impact, will also work with creators to bring the initiative to audiences.
The guide, created in partnership with SurveyMonkey, highlighted ways in which brands can gain traction with the platform’s human-curated communities.
The company also disabled more than 150,000 accounts associated with scam center networks following this year’s Joint Disruption Week.
The new feature is designed to help parents monitor pre-teen behavior in the app and has features similar parental oversight tools on other platforms.
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes said he will start buying Bitcoin when the US Federal Reserve eases monetary policy and starts printing money amid rising tensions in the Middle East.