Alibaba App Widens Access to AI Agent OpenClaw for Mobile Users

Alibaba released a mobile app in China that is designed to help users install OpenClaw and use it to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) agents, Bloomberg reported Friday (March 13).

The app, dubbed “JVS Claw,” is meant for smartphone users who don’t have coding knowledge, according to the report.

Experimenting with agentic AI has become a “nationwide frenzy” among students and retirees in China, and it has driven a market rally as investors look to profit from growing AI adoption, the report said.

Baidu introduced an Android app for OpenClaw earlier this week, and other AI players such as Tencent Holdings and Minimax Group are also competing to offer OpenClaw services, per the report.

PYMNTS reported in February that OpenClaw is an open-source personal agentic assistant that links to any large language model through an application programming interface.

OpenClaw went viral with headlines about AI agents building their own social network and has remained popular as an AI agent that can browse the web, read email, access files, run software and initiate transactions without a human driving each step.

The OpenClaw security team had to patch a vulnerability chain that allowed websites to take control of a developer’s agent with no plugins, extensions or user action required. These attacks were enabled by developers simply browsing the web and accidentally landing on a malicious website.

Oasis Security, which discovered the vulnerability and reported it to the OpenClaw security team, said in a Feb. 26 blog post: “For many organizations, OpenClaw installations represent a growing category of shadow AI: developer-adopted tools that operate outside IT’s visibility, often with broad access to local systems and credentials, and no centralized governance.”

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Tech on Tech: How the Technology Sector is Powering Agentic AI Adoption” found that 75% of tech firms said they were extremely familiar with agentic AI and that 42% of tech firms were exploring how to bring the technology into their operations.

The report also found that tech firms’ trust in agentic AI was shaped by their focus on bias monitoring, reflecting reputational risk and a deeper awareness of how automated decisions can go wrong.

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