Nvidia’s GTC 2026 Keynote Highlights Rise of OpenClaw Technology in AI Landscape

Nvidia’s keynote in March 2026 highlighted OpenClaw, an open-source agent-controlling technology created by researcher Peter Steinberger. Following trends of generative AI (2023), reasoning (2024), and coding agents (2025), the focus for 2026 is on OpenClaw – a personalized operating system enabling AI agents to execute complex real-world tasks.

OpenClaw’s popularity surged rapidly, reaching levels in weeks that took Linus 30 years to achieve. This prompted OpenAI to hire Steinberger as their creator. Nvidia positioned itself as the foundational layer for major cloud providers, suggesting these companies rely on them to attract customers.

The industry is shifting from training models to inference, prompting a pivot by Nvidia to meet this demand. To solidify its position in inference – an area that has faced skepticism – Nvidia struck a $17 billion licensing deal with Groq. This technology will be paired with Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin chips.

OpenClaw’s release led to significant growth for Chinese startups like MiniMax and Zhipu, resulting in 20% stock increases. MiniMax’s valuation now exceeds that of the established giant Baidu. The rapid spread of OpenClaw prompted the Chinese government to warn staff about potential data leaks associated with the technology. Despite Jensen Huang’s confidence, analysts note mounting pressure on Nvidia from AMD’s software and custom AI chips being developed internally by Google and Amazon.