This week’s image shows hundreds of people queuing in Shenzhen to have OpenClaw, the infamous viral AI agent we covered a few weeks ago, installed on their laptops for free. They’re lining up to hand their devices to Tencent staff who configure an AI that can send emails, book flights, draft reports and operate their computer autonomously.
In China, setting up OpenClaw is called “raising the lobster” after its red crustacean logo. Fu Sheng, CEO of Cheetah Mobile, built a team of eight OpenClaw agents that sent 600 personalised New Year greetings in four minutes and published viral content while he slept. Local governments in Shenzhen and Hefei are now subsidising “one-person companies” built entirely around AI agents.
These photos capture the first mass-market adoption of AI agents, and it’s happening in China, not the West.