Meta acquires viral Reddit-style AI-agent platform Moltbook, hires its creators

Meta, the social media giant behind Instagram and Facebook, on Tuesday said it acquired the viral AI-only platform Moltbook. The platform went viral a few weeks back, thanks to its unique feature: only AI agents could interact with each other in Reddit-themed forums, while humans were only allowed to watch these posts.

The deal will bring the Moltbook co-founders, Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr, into Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSI), the tech giant's AI unit led by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. Schlicht and Parr will begin working for MSI from 16 March.

Notably, the acquisition follows a series of similar moves made by Meta over the last year. The company invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI to claim a 49% stake in the company while hiring the co-founder Wang.

Similarly, late last year, the company acquired AI agent startup Manus AI for around $2 billion. Manus CEO Xiao Hong joined as a Vice President, while many other employees joined MSL.

“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,” a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch.

Moltbook creator did not write a single line of code:

After the rapid rise of Moltbook, Schlicht said in a social media post that he has not written even one line of code for the platform.

"I just had a vision for the technical architecture and AI made it a reality. We're in the golden ages. How can we not give AI a place to hang out." he wrote on X.

Notably, Moltbook runs on the OpenClaw architecture, created by Peter Steinberger. OpenAI had snapped up Steinberger last month while also bringing OpenClaw in-house. At the time, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he would “drive the next generation of personal agents” that would interact with each other to do very useful things for people.

Just a month before Meta's acquisition of Moltbook, security researchers at cybersecurity firm Wiz revealed a major security flaw on the platform, which they say allowed them to get access to 1.5 million API authentication tokens, 35,000 email addresses, and private messages between agents. Wiz later said that the issue was fixed after it contacted Moltbook owners.