The "AI Lobster fever" sparked by the open-source AI assistant OpenClaw continues to intensify. It has been learned that Tencent's "AI Lobster" family now consists of five members: Tencent's own version called WorkBuddy, OpenClaw integrated with WeChat Work, OpenClaw integrated with QQ, OpenClaw deployed on Tencent Cloud's Lighthouse service, and QClaw, which is currently undergoing internal testing. Industry insiders noted that Tencent has responded swiftly in this wave of AI Lobster popularity, from initially supporting OpenClaw deployments in the cloud to launching its own versions, which is expected to help accelerate the widespread adoption of AI.
As early as the end of January, Tencent Cloud was the first to announce support for simplified cloud deployment of OpenClaw. The Tencent Cloud Lighthouse service launched an OpenClaw application template, pre-configured with the necessary environment, emphasizing one-click automated installation and deployment. On March 6, nearly a thousand enthusiasts queued up outside Tencent's headquarters in Shenzhen, waiting for assistance from Tencent Cloud engineers to complete free cloud installations of OpenClaw. By 11 AM that morning, all available reservation slots had been fully allocated.
On March 7, Tencent officially opened access for individual users to integrate OpenClaw with QQ official bots, supporting multimedia interactions including Markdown, images, voice, and files. A single QQ account can create up to five bots. On March 8, WeChat Work推送ed a message to enterprise administrators stating, "Just 3 steps to quickly integrate OpenClaw with smart bots." This allows enterprise members to converse directly with the AI assistant, while WeChat Work supports quick integration with OpenClaw and writing data to smart spreadsheets.
It is reported that major cloud service providers, large model developers, and OpenClaw ecosystem products—such as Tencent Cloud Lighthouse, Kimi, Minimax, EasyClaw, Coze, Lobster AI, uCloud, TCADP, Codebuddy, Huawei Cloud, and Baidu Intelligent Cloud—are gradually rolling out support for integrating OpenClaw via WeChat Work. Tencent's recent moves have further fueled the popularity of OpenClaw, which has been trending in China's tech circles for months, accelerating its breakout beyond core tech communities over the past weekend.
The "AI Lobster" trend continues to gain momentum, having even reached China's National People's Congress sessions and being quickly incorporated into local government development plans. On March 9, Tencent announced the official launch of WorkBuddy, a full-scenario AI agent with capabilities similar to OpenClaw, fully compatible with its skills but designed to be more user-friendly and secure. Without complex deployment, users can download, install, and connect to WeChat Work in as little as one minute, then "remote control" this Tencent-branded lobster via their smartphones to perform tasks.
Tencent stated that before its official release, WorkBuddy was already widely used internally. In daily office scenarios, over 2,000 Tencent employees without technical backgrounds are using WorkBuddy to assist HR, administration, secretarial, operations, and sales roles in areas such as data processing and analysis, building local knowledge bases, content creation, poster generation, and automated office tasks, thereby improving efficiency with AI.
The final member of Tencent's "AI Lobster" family is QClaw, currently in internal testing. QClaw is a local AI assistant developed by Tencent PC Manager based on OpenClaw, supporting one-click installation. It is compatible with both Mac and Windows systems, comes pre-loaded with the Kimi-2.5 model, and can be associated by default with built-in models like Kimi, Minimax, GLM, and DeepSeek, while also allowing users to customize large models. Furthermore, QClaw possesses a significant feature not yet available in other OpenClaw products: the ability to converse directly with the "lobster" within WeChat to assign tasks.
Regarding user security concerns, Tencent highlighted that version 18.0 of Tencent PC Manager includes a new AI Security Sandbox feature, providing system-level isolation to protect Agent tools. Meanwhile, the Tencent Cloud Lighthouse service, by providing an independent Linux environment physically separate from users' primary devices, eliminates security risks at their root.
Several interviewees indicated that cloud providers actively offering free installation services are cultivating user habits for cloud consumption. Commercial considerations include long-term binding of cloud resource usage, building moats around model ecosystems, and entering the enterprise services market. Essentially, this is a pragmatic choice for cloud providers to quickly validate business models, accumulate users, and gather ecosystem data at the AI application layer. On this foundation, cloud providers need to further consider who will define the "next-generation interaction paradigm."
Previously, it was reported that cloud providers, tech companies, model developers, and listed companies are all布局相关业务, leveraging the "lobster fever" to promote their own services. Some OpenClaw-like tools have already emerged in the industry. Given that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology previously issued a warning that some OpenClaw instances pose high security risks under default or improper configurations, continued attention will be paid to whether OpenClaw and similar tools can accelerate their promotion safely and genuinely help users improve efficiency when using AI tools.