A major shift can be observed in the AI landscape as of March 2026, centered on Nvidia’s keynote regarding the rise of OpenClaw technology. Following the trends of generative AI (2023), reasoning (2024) and coding agents (2025), 2026 is defined by OpenClaw- an open-source agent-controlling technology by researcher Peter Steinberger. Jensen Huang described OpenClaw as a personalized operating system that allows AI agents to perform complex real-world tasks such as running computers and designing products.

The technology reached a level of popularity in weeks that took Linus 30 years to achieve, prompting OpenAI to hire its creator, Steinberger. However, Huang positioned Nvidia as the foundational layer for all major cloud providers, suggesting that these tech giants rely on Nvidia to bring customers to their clouds.

As the industry shifts focus from training models to inference, Nvidia is pivoting to meet the demand for longer and more complex AI processing. To solidify its grip on inference-where it has faced skepticism-Nvidia struck a $17 billion licensing deal with Groq. This technology will be paired with Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin chips.

OpenClaw’s release caused a massive surge in the Chinese startup. Startups like MiniMax and Zhipu saw 20% stock increases, with MiniMax’s valuation now surpassing the established giant Baidu. The rapid spread of OpenClaw led the Chinese government to warn staff about potential data leaks associated with the technology. Despite Huang’s championship confidence, analysts note that Nvidia faces mounting pressure from AMD’s software and the custom AI chips being developed internally by Google and Amazon.