Meta's Nat Friedman Admits Muse Was 'Heavily Inspired' by OpenClaw After Users Spot Identical File Structures

Nat Friedman, head of product at Meta Superintelligence Labs, told TechCrunch that Muse was 'built from scratch' but 'heavily inspired' by OpenClaw, whose creator Peter Steinberger was recruited by OpenAI earlier in 2026. Users had flagged matching workspace filenames and near-identical SOUL.md configuration files. Friedman said he bought hundreds of Mac minis for the MSL team after using OpenClaw in January.