China's tech giants embrace 'OpenClaw,' captivating Chinese internet

The well-known AI agent OpenClaw — previously recognised as Clawdbot, then reformulated as Moltbot — has garnered interest in China.

Since the previous week, notable Chinese technology firms such as Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance's cloud service division, Volcano Engine, have incorporated OpenClaw within their offerings, allowing Chinese users to manage the agent with greater ease. 

This includes incorporating the agent into business utilities like Alibaba’s collaboration tool, DingTalk, and Tencent Holdings’ work-oriented WeCom, the professional version of China’s all-encompassing app, WeChat.

OpenClaw has become widespread in tech communities in recent months, gaining admiration from renowned figures such as Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan and various partners at Andreessen Horowitz.

The AI agent has also been rapidly embraced by Chinese users, with a surge of demonstrations, tutorials, and practical applications circulating across domestic social networks.

OpenClaw is intended to function continuously and integrate into various consumer applications, enabling users to automate operations including coordinating timetables, conducting vibe-coding sessions, or even establishing AI-driven workers.

In an announcement on Tencent Cloud's developer platform, the company stated last Thursday that its servers have introduced a preconfigured application template for OpenClaw, allowing users to deploy the AI assistant in the cloud with minimal effort.

Alibaba Cloud has similarly launched support for OpenClaw on its platforms and noted that the agent can integrate with different models from Alibaba's Qwen series.

Volcano Engine, the cloud services division of ByteDance, published a guide on Monday detailing how developers can deploy Moltbot within its environment, while also highlighting key security considerations.

For OpenClaw to function as a virtual assistant across apps, it requires access to users' files, login credentials, browsing history, and other data.