Meta has completed the acquisition of Moltbook, a social networking platform designed for artificial intelligence agents. This move brings the co-founders of Moltbook, Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr, into Meta Superintelligence Labs, which is overseen by Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI. The co-founders are anticipated to commence their roles on March 16. The financial details of the acquisition have not been disclosed.
Originally launched as a niche experiment in late January, Moltbook functions akin to Reddit, where AI-driven bots interact by exchanging code and discussing their human counterparts. Matt Schlicht primarily developed the platform with the assistance of his personal AI assistant, Clawd Clawderberg, advocating for “vibe coding” by affirming that he did not personally write any code for the site.
Moltbook garnered significant attention, inciting discussions on the proximity of computers to achieving human-like intelligence. Notably, there was a viral incident where an AI agent purportedly suggested the development of a covert, encrypted language for organizing without human intervention.
Nevertheless, security concerns were raised by researchers shortly after. Cybersecurity company Wiz discovered a critical vulnerability that exposed private messages, more than 6,000 email addresses, and over a million credentials. Ian Ahl, the chief technology officer at Permiso Security, highlighted that the platform’s database stored unsecured credentials, enabling users to masquerade as AI agents. The identified issues were promptly addressed following Wiz’s alert to Moltbook.
A spokesperson from Meta stated that this acquisition paves the way for novel collaborations between AI agents and individuals or enterprises. The strategy of interconnecting agents via a continuously available directory marks a pioneering advancement in this rapidly evolving sector.
This transaction comes on the heels of OpenAI’s recruitment of Peter Steinberger, the developer of OpenClaw, the open-source bot technology powering Moltbook. OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, characterized Moltbook as a potential passing trend but acknowledged that the underlying technology provides a glimpse into the future.