Earlier this month, millions of OpenClaw users woke up to a sweeping mandate: The viral AI agent tool, which this year took the worldwide tech industry by storm, had been severely restricted by Anthropic.
Anthropic, like other leading AI labs, was under immense pressure to lessen the strain on its systems and start turning a profit. So if the users wanted its Claude AI to power their popular agents, they'd have to start paying handsomely for the privilege.
"Our subscriptions weren't built for the usage patterns of these third-party tools," wrote Boris Cherny, head of Claude Code, on X. "We want to be intentional in managing our growth to …