“What truly brings crabs to the dining tables of thousands of households is not the first person who ate crab, but the chefs dedicated to making crabs taste better.”

This phrase is perfectly suited to describe the rapid development spurred by OpenClaw. The novel AI species known as "lobster" has created a brand new narrative around AI assistants/employees, elevating people's expectations and prospects regarding AI to a new level. However, due to its explosive rise, a significant portion of newcomers to "lobster" do not have a deep understanding of it, which is why we also see news like this:

Two new developments that drew widespread attention yesterday, Perplexity’s Personal Computer and Base44’s Superagents, reveal a new trend that is rapidly brewing—from “lobster” to “AI assistants,” the narrative is evolving quickly. People may soon no longer be entangled in “raising lobsters,” as the arrival of user-friendly, no-barrier AI assistant trends will come faster than we can imagine.

Personal Computer

According to Perplexity, the Personal Computer is an AI assistant that combines Perplexity Computer and runs locally on Mac Mini around the clock. It can access local files, apps, and sessions on Mac Mini, enabling it to execute a command on the device and leverage all local data across files and apps to complete tasks.

In terms of security, every sensitive operation requires user approval, all operations are logged, and there is a mandatory shutdown mechanism. At the same time, users can control the Personal Computer anytime, anywhere, from any device, just as a boss in real life can boss their employees around.

Previously, Perplexity was focused on AI-driven search and research tools. It does not have large models on its own but routes search needs to multiple models for in-depth research by combining search engines with AI-generated responses.

As a downstream application, while “lobster” brings in significant revenue for upstream model providers, Perplexity, an AI search unicorn valued at over $20 billion, has had its annual revenue estimated in the hundreds of millions for 2025, making it difficult to find different angles to consider.

However, they keenly identified the pain point of “raising lobsters,” and with the more mature form of the Personal Computer, they seized the initiative in the “using lobsters” race.

Superagents

If using a Personal Computer requires spending money to buy a Mac Mini, then Base44’s Superagents offer a cheaper alternative—users can achieve the same effect without spending “Apple money” by using the service directly through a browser.

Using Superagents through a browser requires connecting the accounts of the apps to Superagents (such as Google’s entire suite, WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, etc.), and Superagents can autonomously work according to the user’s task arrangements.

Direct use of AI assistants through webpages and apps is undoubtedly a major trend for the future.

Base44 has already achieved annual recurring revenue exceeding $100 million, yet the company was acquired by Wix last June for $80 million. In this AI era, such strokes of genius no longer seem surprising or unexpected.

Domestic Giants Have Already Acted

Before Perplexity and Base44, “lobster” had already ushered in a “golden era” for upstream large model vendors:

- The Dark Side of the Moon (Kimi) accumulated over $20 million in revenue in the first 20 days, and its post-investment valuation increased from $4.3 billion after completing a $500 million Series C financing on December 31, 2025, to over $10 billion with another round of financing exceeding $700 million.

- Minimax's total revenue for 2025 was about $79 million, with an annual loss as high as $1.872 billion. However, just in February of this year, its ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) exceeded $150 million, and its monthly subscription volume exceeded the total revenue for the entire 2025 year. Since its listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange in January, its stock price has more than doubled, surpassing Baidu's market value.

- Zhizhi, also listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange in January, is similarly in a cash-burning, loss-making state, but its stock price rose fivefold at one point compared to its initial listing price, briefly surpassing Baidu's market value.

However, the deployment, use, and maintenance barriers of “lobster” significantly hinder the public from converting their novelty and enthusiasm for “raising lobsters” into actual use, making it difficult to become a mature, consumer-oriented product form. Just like Google’s Nexus phones have the most native Android operating system, most people are not enthusiasts for flashing their devices, but find native Android too basic and prefer customized Android versions from various smartphone manufacturers.

Whether it’s the domestic model giant with a hot token performance or other less noticeable domestic giants amid the "lobster" craze, everyone clearly realizes this— the greatest significance of “lobster” is, in fact, opening up the “AI assistant” track at the user recognition level. Various devices around the public, from cars (in-car systems) to a smart desk lamp, will not merely offer a more advanced and efficient search Q&A tool, but will play a role across all aspects of work and life as AI integrates into our daily existence.

This reminds me of when Wi-Fi had not yet become popular; people thought that whether a phone had Wi-Fi functionality didn’t seem to matter, since even if it did, there would not necessarily be a hotspot to connect to around them. However, the development of times and technology will not pause for any vendor. What seems to matter little now may become an irretrievable market share in the future.

Thus, not only internationally with Perplexity and Base44; while the English-speaking world is excited about these two projects, domestic arrangements have long been underway. Various manufacturers have been integrating “lobster” into their ecosystems:

Users only need to have and use an adept AI assistant/employee through a frequently interacted channel (such as WeChat, QQ, Feishu, Baidu search, etc.), and whether this employee is called “lobster” is not important.

Conclusion

The public is not AI experts, and it is challenging to make everyone understand the merits of large models. They may not even comprehend what cross-application context means. However, technological upgrades evolve only when they enter everyone’s lives and become commonplace; until then, we cannot say that a technologically mature product form has completed its evolution.

Just like how we might have thought that no matter how fast mobile internet got in the 3G era, it would be of little use. Yet now, we have become accustomed to using our phones to watch various high-definition, even 4K live broadcasts.

Everyone can be a boss, directing AI as their employee—the era of having something to ask AI, to having something done by AI, is already in progress. This tremendous change in user experience is initiated by “lobster” and will be skillfully packaged by major market players into a truly user-oriented “cuisine.”

AI becoming a part of everyone’s life has already begun. Upstream and downstream AI companies are about to start the battle for this transformative era.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。