Max Zeff
@ZeffMax
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Senior AI Reporter @TechCrunch | Formerly @Gizmodo, @markets, @nbc | Send anonymous tips on Signal @ mzeff.88
San Francisco, CA
Joined November 2020
SCOOP: Meta has hired a key OpenAI researcher, Trapit Bansal, to build AI reasoning models, TechCrunch has learned. Bansal helped kickstart OpenAI's work on reinforcement learning, and was a key leader behind the company's first AI reasoning model, o1.
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RT @raywongy: This is great! @KyleBarr5 makes a good case that most Amazon Prime Day deals are not in fact deals at all. Many brands mark u….
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the grok 4 event is late for most people but xai's unauthorized system prompt modifier doesn't log on for hours.
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I don't know how many people will switch from Chrome. but having an AI chatbot beside your browser that automatically has context about what you're looking it as a great UX. So many people are copy and pasting text/links/files into ChatGPT all day. This streamlines that.
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NEW: Perplexity’s Comet browser went live this week, marking the company’s latest challenge to overtake Google as doorstep to the Internet. The marquee new feature is Comet Assistant, an in-browser AI agent. Perplexity launches a LOT of stuff — this one feels more consequential.
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Was grok’s nazi behavior the final straw?.
After two incredible years, I’ve decided to step down as CEO of 𝕏. When @elonmusk and I first spoke of his vision for X, I knew it would be the opportunity of a lifetime to carry out the extraordinary mission of this company. I’m immensely grateful to him for entrusting me.
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RT @shiringhaffary: NEW: CA Sen Scott Wiener, author of SB 1047, is expanding new state bill to require leading AI companies to publicly re….
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one day out from the Grok 4 launch — supposed xAI's GPT-5 competitor — and the company loses two top infrastructure heads (Uday Ruddarraju and Mike Dalton) and grok's X bot is praising hitler. nice.
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weirdly, Meta poaching their top guy is the biggest compliment Apple's AI team has received in years.
BREAKING: Apple’s top executive and distinguished engineer in charge of its AI models, Ruoming Pang, has been poached by Meta for its new AI Superintelligence division, sources tell me.
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RT @TechCrunch: Slate Auto drops “under $20,000” pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit | TechCrunch .
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behind the scenes on this story:. Last night Soham agreed to do an interview with me. This morning, he directed me to a PR team representing him, which sent me a statement from his new company @darwin_studios.
The story you've all been waiting for. I spoke to several startup founders and engineers that know and have interviewed Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter that blew up on the internet this week. He's been known for a while as an excellent — but rather elusive — engineer.
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The story you've all been waiting for. I spoke to several startup founders and engineers that know and have interviewed Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter that blew up on the internet this week. He's been known for a while as an excellent — but rather elusive — engineer.
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Jim Spanfeller, CEO of G/O Media, going down swinging at the union in his letter announcing the company's wind down
New: G/O Media is shutting down, its CEO Jim Spanfeller says, after announcing the sale of Kotaku to European media co Keleops. The Root is the only site left at G/O Media, and Spanfeller says they are still hunting for a buyer
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RT @katie_robertson: New: G/O Media is shutting down, its CEO Jim Spanfeller says, after announcing the sale of Kotaku to European media co….
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Great post/thread from Steven debunking a widely cited claim in the AI moratorium debate. Seems like there have been far fewer than 1,000 state AI bills introduced this year, and an even smaller amount that would actually create any requirements for AI model developers.
People keep claiming that US states have proposed 1,000+ AI-related bills this year, but that number just doesn't hold up to analysis. A thread:
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TechCrunch updated our story to reflect this. Initially, a Cloudflare spokesperson told us that there was no cryptocurrency or blockchain involved in Pay Per Crawl at this time.
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