The acquisition reflects intensifying competition among the largest technology companies to develop and control AI agents — systems that can take actions and perform tasks on a person’s behalf, moving well beyond the conversational capabilities of a traditional chatbot.
Meta said Tuesday it will acquire Moltbook, a social network built exclusively for artificial intelligence agents to post messages and interact with each other. The deal will bring Moltbook co-founders Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr into the company behind Facebook and Instagram. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Moltbook drew viral attention in recent weeks as a Reddit-like platform where AI systems exchange messages, and the takeover reflects the tech industry’s broader push to develop AI agents — systems that can take actions on a person’s behalf, going well beyond what a traditional chatbot can do.
“Moltbook introduced novel ideas in a ‘rapidly developing space,’” Meta said in a statement, adding the platform would open “new ways for AI agents to work for people and businesses.”
OpenAI made parallel moves
OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, last month hired Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw — the AI agent technology, formerly called Moltbot, upon which Moltbook was built. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said at the time that Steinberger would join the company “to drive the next generation of personal agents” that will interact with each other “to do very useful things for people.”
OpenClaw runs locally on users’ own hardware, allowing it to access and manage files and data directly on a device and connect with messaging applications including Discord and Signal. Users who create OpenClaw agents can then direct them to join Moltbook.
OpenAI also said this week it was acquiring Promptfoo, an AI security platform that tests the behaviors and risks of agents.
Security concerns followed Moltbook’s launch
Questions about the authenticity of content posted on Moltbook arose during its first week of operation, when the platform was at its highest visibility. Researchers at Wiz, a cloud security platform, published a report shortly after Moltbook launched detailing security vulnerabilities on the site. Those vulnerabilities have since been patched, according to the Associated Press.