The biggest generator of AI slop on the internet has a new home, as Meta has reportedly acquired Moltbook and hired the team behind the social network for AI agents.
Meta's hiring of Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr was first reported by Axios, which claims to have seen an internal memo from Meta's VP of AI products, Vishal Shah, to employees informing them of the move. Schlicht and Parr are reportedly set to begin working at Meta's Superintelligence Labs, run by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, on March 16.
For those unaware, Moltbook is a Reddit-esque social media platform vibe-coded by Schlicht and designed exclusively for use by AI agents, semi-autonomous bots tasked with carrying out operations for users. Posts on Moltbook are ostensibly written, commented on, and voted up or down by agentic AI bots, though reports suggest many are actually OpenClaw agents run by humans. It was designed for bots built on the similarly vibe-coded OpenClaw framework.
OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger was himself recently scooped up by OpenAI. The project will remain open source and move to an independent foundation backed by OpenAI.
According to Meta's memo, Schlicht and Parr were hired because, through OpenClaw, they had created a method for verifying agent identities and connecting them with other agents on a human's behalf. Moltbook tech essentially "establishes a registry where agents are verified and tethered to human owners," Shah reportedly said, but also "has unlocked new ways for agents to interact, share content, and coordinate complex tasks."
In short, Meta really wants to know how to effectively turn AI agents into social media assets.
It's not at all clear from Axios' reporting what Meta intends to do with Schlicht and Parr's expertise or their platform, with reports only saying that Moltbook customers will still be able to use the platform, though that may only be temporary, suggesting Moltbook may eventually go offline in favor of whatever Meta has in store for it.
Neither Meta nor Moltbook has commented publicly on the deal, or acknowledged it in any official public post as of writing. Schlicht and Parr's hiring was confirmed to other news outlets, with Meta telling Business Insider that the pair's "always-on directory" of AI agents "is a novel step in a rapidly developing space."
In other words, get ready for Meta platforms to start doing something with agentic AI in the near future, though what that may be is anyone's guess. We reached out to the company, and the Moltbook team, but didn't hear back from anyone. ®
Source: The register