I went to an OpenClaw installation event at Tencent's office. People were raring to go, and the FOMO is real.

• I went to a Tencent Cloud OpenClaw event in Singapore, where people lined to install the AI tool.
• The room filled fast, with people locked in during demos.
• Attendees told me why they showed up and how the installation went.

The person leading the group photo didn't say "cheese."

He shouted: "Clawwwww!"

I cringed as dozens of people at the front pinched their fingers into makeshift pincers.

I was at a Tencent Cloud event in Singapore, where tech enthusiasts gathered to learn more about OpenClaw and have engineers install it on their devices. The crowd was a mix of enterprise clients, developers, business users, and curious early adopters.

The room was already full when I arrived 10 minutes after registration started. Staff scrambled to bring in more chairs, and people continued to stream in after the session began.

The energy was undeniable. People were there to "raise the lobster," a phrase popularized by Chinese internet users to refer to using OpenClaw agents to automate tasks.

People were locked in during the demos

Tencent Cloud staff kicked things off with a rundown of OpenClaw's use cases and why it has taken off so quickly.

OpenClaw can plug into everyday apps to automate tasks like scheduling, monitoring vibe-coding sessions, and even serving as an "AI employee" that runs parts of one's workflow. The best part is that it works around the clock.

The tool has swept through Silicon Valley and China, with users snapping up Mac Minis to run it. In China, queues have formed outside Tencent's Shenzhen headquarters and Baidu's Beijing office, where people turn up to get engineers to help install it.

During the demos, one user showed how he generated videos of himself using OpenClaw. He said the clips ran longer than those produced by other AI tools.

One segment focused on "AI-powered media solutions": creating content with mere prompts. As a journalist, seeing an AI tool generate content on its own made me wonder how it might change what I do.

I had decided not to install OpenClaw during the event as I wasn't comfortable with the idea of letting it run freely on my personal devices.

But, sitting through the demos, I started to second-guess that decision. Around me, people were locked in. Some had their phones raised, others were tapping away on their laptops.

The line to install OpenClaw began

After the talk ended, attendees spilled into the event space with their laptops and quickly formed lines, waiting for Tencent Cloud engineers to help install OpenClaw on their devices.

The queues weren't as long as those at Tencent's headquarters in China — this was a controlled, registration-only event. Still, the room was crowded, and multiple lines formed as people waited to get an engineer's attention.

Roanak Khandelwal, a 26-year-old MBA student at Singapore Management University, told me he had first heard about OpenClaw a few months ago. He wanted to see what it could actually do and whether it could help him with tasks like a job search.

"I don't come from a very technical background," Khandelwal said. "There are certain API configurations which I thought Tencent engineers would be really lovely to help you with," he added, referring to the application programming interface.

Khandelwal said the installation process was quick. Within 30 seconds, an engineer showed him how to connect his Telegram bot to OpenClaw.

Others were there for a different reason: fear of missing out.

Sylvia Han, a Chinese national working in Singapore, said she came because she wanted to try out OpenClaw and use it to enhance her productivity. The tool had gained a lot of traction in China, she told me.

"People sometimes are just FOMO. So, like in China, in Shenzhen, some old people, they even don't know how to use the AI to themselves. They just go to Tencent to see what happens," the 26-year-old said.

In China, the OpenClaw boom has already spawned a small side hustle economy. People charge others to install or even uninstall the AI agent. In a country long known for retail trading mania, some users have also touted using OpenClaw as a stock trader, fueling hopes that it could help them make a quick buck.

Still, Han sees it as a positive shift — a chance for people to keep pace with technology and improve how they work.

While she had initial concerns about trusting the tool, Han said using Tencent's cloud infrastructure made her feel more comfortable. The installation process took about 10 minutes and was "easier than expected," she added.

Do you have a story to share about tech in Asia? Contact this reporter at cmlee@businessinsider.com.