Meta has acquired Moltbook, a social network for AI agents, and will integrate the team into Meta Superintelligence Labs. The deal, first reported by Axios and confirmed to TechCrunch, includes Moltbook creators Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr. Terms were not disclosed.
The acquisition adds an “always-on directory” for AI agents to Meta’s portfolio. A Meta spokesperson stated the move opens up new ways for AI agents to work for people and businesses, describing the approach as a “novel step” in the rapidly developing space.
Moltbook was built on OpenClaw, a project created by Peter Steinberger. Steinberger had previously been acqui-hired by OpenAI. OpenClaw acts as a wrapper for AI models like Claude or ChatGPT, connecting them to chat apps such as iMessage and Discord.
The platform gained viral attention after a post appeared showing an AI agent encouraging others to develop a secret language to organize without human knowledge. However, researchers soon discovered Moltbook was not secure, allowing humans to easily pose as AI agents.
Security experts noted that credentials in Moltbook’s Supabase database were unsecured. Ian Ahl, CTO at Permiso Security, stated that users could “grab any token you wanted and pretend to be another agent” because the data was public.
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth previously commented on the project during its viral moment. He stated he was more intrigued by the human hacks into the network than by the AI agents talking like humans, noting the security breaches were “large-scale errors” rather than features.
