"Schrimpfanterie für alle", die großen Firmen wachen auf

Large enterprises have finally recognized: AI has evolved from a "toy" for the elite to a "tool" for the masses.

At the beginning of 2026, a red "Cancer Crawfish" crawled across the screens of developers around the world and began to penetrate into the lives of countless ordinary people.

The "Cancer Crawfish" is called OpenClaw and was formerly known as Clawdbot and Moltbot. Within just a few months, it won the wonder of 145,000 stars on GitHub. Shortly after the Chinese New Year, various offline sharing events and online livestreams were successively held in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, bringing together all those interested in OpenClaw. These people were afraid of missing any opportunity to learn, exchange, and gradually install the "Cancer."

In this wave of the so - called "National Cancer Cultivation," the personal experience of Fu Sheng, the CEO of Cheetah Mobile, became the most representative practical example. During the Chinese New Year, Fu Sheng accidentally got injured while skiing and had a hip dislocation, so he had to lie in bed and couldn't move. With just voice control, he was able to build his own team of 8 AI agents in only 14 days.

This AI team he named "Sanwan" worked automatically around the clock, efficiently and autonomously carried out various tasks, and finally helped the company's official account produce an article with over 100,000 views, achieve over one million views on Twitter, and at the same time manage live and short - video operations and reach over one million viewers.

The euphoria continues. On March 6, 2026, on the stage of an offline voluntary installation event of OpenClaw at the north square of the Tencent building in Shenzhen, people who had flown from all over China appeared to learn how to use it.

To this day, this movement, referred to as the "National Cancer Cultivation," is reshaping our perception of artificial intelligence at an unprecedented speed. But during the technological iteration, we also wonder if this is just an experiment with a huge bubble. There are voices saying that there is a "sniff" behind this national - scale euphoria.

Although some people without technical knowledge blindly follow the trend, and many application scenarios are still very immature and even come with security risks. But if we look beyond the noisy surface, we will also see that this is not just a technological or capital - driven euphoria, but also a "National Infrastructure" for the socialization of AI.

In this movement participated by the whole population, the role of large enterprises is also changing. They have finally recognized: AI is evolving from a "toy" for the elite to a "tool" for the masses.

01 From "Elite Toy" to "National Experiment"

In recent years since the beginning of the AI era, in the perception of many people, the large - scale model was still the exclusive territory of a few tech geeks and research institutions. But with the rise of OpenClaw, this perceptual threshold is gradually being broken.

According to public reports, OpenClaw is an open - source AI agent that mainly helps users handle daily tasks such as sending emails and managing calendars. It has received over 145,000 stars on GitHub and is regarded by many business leaders as the "engine of the future" that can independently operate an entire company.

Even more astonishing is its spread speed. The project was officially launched at the end of 2025, and by the end of January 2026, Tencent Cloud and Alibaba Cloud successively launched cloud - based one - click deployment solutions to support ecosystem adaptation and implementation. This popularity quickly spread beyond the tech circle and even triggered an almost pilgrim - like enthusiasm among ordinary people.

A relevant staff member of Tencent Cloud told "Business Show" that he witnessed an impressive scene on March 6. Many developers, entrepreneurs, and even some corporate employees from all over China, especially those from Hangzhou and other places, flew to Shenzhen one day earlier by plane specifically to test and deploy OpenClaw as soon as possible.

These "pilgrims" who came from other cities are not here to participate in a closed - door tech summit, but only to get a "step - by - step" guide at this deployment site. They also seem to intend to bring this new agent architecture into their own teams or better implement their applications. "I want it to help me with stock trading," said a participant on - site.

This "pilgrim" scene has been concretized in offline events, and this detail also shows that the power structure of technology is fundamentally reversing. "Actually, I think many people may not even know what a crawfish is and just came here," said the above - mentioned interviewee of "Business Show."

From the live pictures of the event in Shenzhen, we can also see that hundreds of developers queued up early with their laptops on the square. The queue was three rows wide and took up almost a part of the whole square. According to reports, there were not only local tech geeks on - site but also a large number of users who came specifically from other places.

To meet the huge demand, the Tencent Cloud team set up nearly 10 long tables as temporary deployment areas. At each table, 3 technicians were deployed, sitting opposite the users and providing a step - by - step guide from local environment configuration to starting the Docker containers.

From the "readiness for battle" here, we can see the urgent demand of users after eliminating the deployment threshold and ensuring a certain environment. We even saw that a developer who works in a nearby technology park asked in the live - chat group: "When does the event end? Is there still time until noon? I plan to come here during my lunch break." Apparently, this corporate employee just wants to complete the deployment in one or two hours and go back to work with this "crawfish" in the afternoon.

This time pressure confirms the employees' desire to improve efficiency through AI. When someone in the group said that the on - site queue was very long and users should set it up themselves according to the tutorial, some already stated that they didn't want to wait for the online tutorial in the group and try it slowly, but rather quickly complete the environment configuration during fragmented time with the help of on - site experts and immediately integrate OpenClaw into office scenarios such as Feishu and WeChat Enterprise.

Public reports show that since the end of January 2026, the downloads from Chinese IP addresses have increased significantly, and the average daily page views of the Chinese documentation of the project have exceeded all other non - English languages.

According to the latest observations of "Business Show," even many non - technicians from other places have traveled to first - tier cities like Beijing and Shenzhen just to experience the fun of the "Cancer Cultivation." They may not know the Transformer architecture and don't care about the algorithms of token consumption, but they come with their simplest needs, as long as it helps them automatically organize emails, monitor inventory, or just have a chat.

We have found that there are also many content creators who want to leave everything from content creation to publication and later data monitoring and integration to their super AI assistants. The state of most people is that it doesn't matter if it works or how well it works; they just want to install the "crawfish" first.

This is also the point of contention triggered by the "bubble." Some think that the arrival of many people without a technical background may bring chaos and inefficiency. But the product logic behind the popularity of OpenClaw is that it actually implements "messages as commands" and naturally combines the chatbot dialogue experience with the triggerable, authorized, and actionable agent layer. In addition to the founder's product vision, OpenClaw has also stimulated interests in both software and hardware directions and even led to a short - term supply shortage for Mac Mini due to deployment demand.

The imagination of the elites in large enterprises has its limits, but the needs of the population are endless. When AI shifts from "dialogue" to "implementation," only countless real scenarios can train real intelligence. These seemingly absurd "wild uses" are actually exploring the unknown boundaries of the AI agent.

02 Safety Warning: Putting an "Electronic Shackle" on AI

There is no doubt that the current OpenClaw wave contains a bubble and also poses huge security risks. This is also the core reason why many large enterprises promote cloud deployment instead of local deployment.

We know that OpenClaw is different from traditional chatbots. It has very high system privileges and can read and write files, execute shell commands, control the browser, and even operate email accounts. If it is installed locally on a personal computer, it is equivalent to giving the key to one's own front door to an under - developed "digital assistant."

Moreover, several astonishing security incidents have occurred recently. Some users, after local installation, due to prompt injection or misconfiguration, made OpenClaw delete important local documents or even format the corresponding folder.

A network security expert warned that if a malicious attacker compromises the local OpenClaw through hidden commands on a web page or in an email, the consequences could be unimaginable. In the best - case scenario, privacy will be disclosed; in the worst - case scenario, the entire personal computer will become a "zombie computer."

Therefore, it has become an industry consensus to "keep the agent in a cloud cage." The lightweight application server solutions of Tencent Cloud and Alibaba Cloud are essentially designed to create an isolated operating environment for this highly - privileged AI agent.

For example, physical isolation: The agent runs in a virtual machine in the cloud and is completely physically separated from the user's personal computer and mobile phone. Even if the agent is compromised, fails, or accidentally makes a mistake, only a cloud instance that can be reset at any time will be lost, and it will never affect the user's local photos, documents, and bank accounts.

Moreover, rights control is possible: The cloud environment can strictly restrict the network output and file access scope of the agent and follow the principle of "Don't put sensitive data on the Internet; don't treat Internet data as sensitive." There is also the possibility of resetting at any time: As soon as there is an error in configuration or an attack occurs, the cloud image supports second - fast snapshot restoration, while local data, once lost, is often impossible to recover.

A technician from a large enterprise described it to "Business Show" like this: "We encourage people to 'cultivate crawfish,' but you can't let the crawfish 'run' in your house. Cloud deployment is the transparent 'aquarium' that allows you to observe its operation and at the same time ensures that it doesn't jump out and knock over your 'furniture.'"

03 From "Money - Burning" to "Public Welfare"

Besides security, cost is another real threshold. OpenClaw often needs to call large - scale models when performing tasks, which causes an enormous token consumption, and thus it is called a "token burner."

Fu Sheng, the CEO of Cheetah Mobile, shared his measured data in a recent live broadcast: As a heavy user, he spends about over 100 US dollars per day on OpenClaw because his "crawfish team" undertakes highly - intensive commercial tasks such as managing the official account and analyzing live data. But Fu Sheng also pointed out that for normal private users, if they are not oriented towards commercial use, a monthly expense of a few dozen US dollars is enough to support daily use.

More importantly, the cost of infrastructure is dropping rapidly, which further lowers the usage barrier. According to the official event information of Tencent Cloud, the price of the special package for developers of the lightweight application server has dropped to only 7.9 yuan per month. This "online - offline" double optimization of cost combined with the security guarantee of the cloud has turned the "Cancer Cultivation" from a game for the rich to an everyday activity for ordinary people.

But the bubble is often a necessary "fermentation process" before the spread of new technologies.

Firstly, the bubble brings an extreme expansion of scale. Data shows that the global market for AI agents will explode from 5.1 billion US dollars in 2024 to 80 billion US dollars in 2027. The Chinese market will reach 171.65 billion yuan by 2031 with an average annual growth rate of over 60%. Without this explosive attention and participation, the education work for AI agents would be prohibitively expensive.

Secondly, the bubble also accelerates the selection of application scenarios. Peter Steinberger, the founder of OpenClaw, said openly in an interview that he can't let go of OpenClaw anymore and feels that he doesn't need independent apps anymore. And the way he sees people using OpenClaw indicates that most apps will disappear. "Why do I still need a fitness app?" he said. "I just need to send it a photo of my meal, and it can match all the information, adjust my program, and ensure that I can achieve my goal."

This path of "first execute, then optimize, then restructure" is exactly the process in which 10% of the "financial agents," "HR agents," or "research partners" that are tailored to real problems are filtered out from millions of attempts.

An insider told "Business Show": "Actually, the more people know about it, the...