The invitation to this week’s meetup for fans of viral AI agent OpenClaw comes illustrated with a giant, smiling lobster perched on top of The Gherkin in London. At a recent “ClawCon” in New York, partygoers were photographed wearing lobster claw headbands. Berlin’s spin on the trend this month was a night of “technical deep dives and music”.
Whether an AI rave sounds like your idea of a good time or not, lobsters are everywhere in tech right now. They are in emojis, on merchandise and added to project titles. The playfulness feels like pre-techlash days, when downloading tools with cute logos was considered fun and hardly anyone talked about human obsolescence. Even Ashton Kutcher — mainstay of the 2010s tech scene — is back, posing for pictures at the San Francisco chapter of ClawCon.
Everything tracks back to the original lobster — OpenClaw’s wide-eyed cartoon crustacean, its claws pointed up as if welcoming a hug. In the space of five months the logo for this free, open-source, locally run autonomous agent is on its way to becoming the mascot for agentic AI — artificial intelligence that can carry out actions on your behalf.