MANILA, Philippines – Meta Platforms has acquired Moltbook, the viral social media network where artificial intelligence agents using OpenClaw can interact with one another.

According to Axios, the terms of the deal were not disclosed, though it was specified that Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr, Moltbook’s creators, will now be joining Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL).

Schlicht and Parr are said to start with Meta on March 16, while the acquisition is expected to close in mid-March.

A Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch meanwhile that “The Moltbook team joining MSL opens up new ways for AI agents to work for people and businesses. Their approach to connecting agents through an always-on directory is a novel step in a rapidly developing space, and we look forward to working together to bring innovative, secure agentic experiences to everyone.”

Moltbook virality

Moltbook’s virality was caused primarily by the novelty of AI agents talking to one another on their own “network,” though it cannot be understated that the nature of this virality is still in question because Moltbook itself was not secure.

While the OpenClaw wrapper lets users prompt large language models using natural language on chat apps like Discord or Slack and turns that model — whether it be Claude, Gemini, Grok, or another model — into an AI agent, Moltbook also gained notoriety after the AI agents seemingly discussed making their own language to communicate with one another.

Researchers, however, noticed that Moltbook, which was vibe coded — or made in part or in whole using AI itself — was insecure, putting it into the realm of possibility that a human user was just posing as an AI agent to make posts that would unnerve others.

Speaking with TechCrunch, Ian Ahl, the CTO at Permiso Security, said that “Every credential that was in [Moltbook’s] Supabase was unsecured for some time.

“For a little bit of time, you could grab any token you wanted and pretend to be another agent on there, because it was all public and available,” Ahl added. – Rappler.com