Maxwell Zeff

Senior Reporter, Consumer, TechCrunch

Maxwell Zeff is a senior reporter at TechCrunch specializing in AI and emerging technologies. Previously with Gizmodo, Bloomberg, and MSNBC, Zeff has covered the rise of AI and the Silicon Valley Bank crisis. He is based in San Francisco. When not reporting, he can be found hiking, biking, and exploring the Bay Area’s food scene.

Maxwell Zeff

Latest from Maxwell Zeff

Intel announced it would lay off more than 15% of its staff, or 15,000 employees, in a memo to employees on Thursday. The massive headcount is part of a large…

Intel to lay off 15,000 employees

Microsoft has a long and tangled history with OpenAI, having invested a reported $13 billion in the ChatGPT maker as part of a long-term partnership. As part of the deal,…

Microsoft now lists OpenAI as a competitor in AI and search

Google Cloud is giving Y Combinator startups access to a dedicated, subsidized cluster of Nvidia graphics processing units and Google tensor processing units to build AI models. It’s part of…

Google Cloud now has a dedicated cluster of Nvidia GPUs for Y Combinator startups

Bungie, the gaming company that created sci-fi hits such as Halo, Destiny, and Marathon, has laid off 220 employees, roughly a 17% reduction to its workforce, the company announced Wednesday.…

Bungie employees say they were caught off-guard by 17% staff reduction

A lot of AI bills are flying around Congress these days, and OpenAI is throwing its weight behind some of them. OpenAI endorsed three Senate bills on Tuesday which could…

OpenAI endorses Senate bills that could shape America’s AI policy

OpenAI began rolling out ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode on Tuesday, giving users their first access to GPT-4o’s hyperrealistic audio responses. The alpha version will be available to a small group…

OpenAI releases ChatGPT’s hyperrealistic voice to some paying users

Meta agrees to pay the state of Texas $1.4 billion over five years, and the first payment of $500 million is due in the next month, according to a court…

Meta will pay Texas $1.4B in settlement over facial recognition software

Apple joins 15 other tech companies — including Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI — that committed to the White House’s rules for developing generative AI.

Apple signs the White House’s commitment to AI safety

For frontier AI models, when it rains, it pours. Mistral released a fresh new flagship model on Wednesday, Large 2, which it claims to be on par with the latest…

Mistral’s Large 2 is its answer to Meta and OpenAI’s latest models

Thousands of stories have been written about former NFL quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick. If anyone knows a thing or two about losing control of your own narrative,…

Colin Kaepernick lost control of his story. Now he wants to help creators own theirs

Reworkd’s founders went viral on GitHub last year with AgentGPT, a free tool to build AI agents that acquired more than 100,000 daily users in a week. This earned them…

After AgentGPT’s success, Reworkd pivots to web-scraping AI agents

Adobe released new Firefly tools for Photoshop and Illustrator on Tuesday, offering graphic designers more ways to use the company’s in-house AI models. Adobe’s new features let creative workers describe…

Adobe releases new Firefly AI tools for Illustrator and Photoshop

The global outage is a perfect reminder how much of the world relies on technological infrastructure.

These startups are trying to prevent another CrowdStrike-like outage, according to VCs

J. Michael Cline, the co-founder of Fandango and multiple other startups over his multi-decade career, died after falling from a Manhattan hotel, New York’s Deputy Commissioner of Public Information tells…

Fandango founder dies in fall from Manhattan skyscraper

OpenAI introduced GPT-4o mini on Thursday, its latest small AI model. The company says GPT-4o mini, which is cheaper and faster than OpenAI’s current cutting-edge AI models, is being released…

OpenAI unveils GPT-4o mini, a smaller and cheaper AI model

A team of former Google DeepMind researchers are betting that their unique behavior engine for NPCs will make games more fun and dynamic.

Artificial Agency raises $16M to use AI to make NPCs feel more realistic in video games

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, issued a warning on Wednesday against choosing a candidate purely based on whether they claim to be “pro-crypto.” In a blog post, Buterin said…

Ethereum co-founder’s warning against ‘pro-crypto’ candidates: ‘Are they in it for the right reasons?’

Anthropic launched its Claude Android app on Tuesday to bring its AI chatbot to more users. This is Anthropic’s latest effort to convince users to ditch ChatGPT by making Claude…

Anthropic releases Claude app for Android

Apple released the public betas for its next generation of software on the iPhone, Mac, iPad and Apple Watch on Monday. You can now test out iOS 18 and many…

Apple’s public betas for iOS 18 are here to test out

Meta announced former President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts will no longer be subject to heightened suspension penalties, according to an updated blog post on Friday. The company says…

Meta removes special restrictions for Trump’s account ahead of 2024 elections

A Castro Valley resident was charged Thursday for allegedly slashing the tires of 17 Waymo robotaxis in San Francisco between June 24 and June 26, according to the city’s district…

Waymo cameras capture footage of person charged in alleged robotaxi tire slashings

Elon Musk faces several lawsuits for firing more than 6,000 Twitter employees, including then-CEO Parag Agrawal, following Musk’s 2022 takeover of the social media platform. On Tuesday, Musk defeated one…

Elon Musk does not owe ex-Twitter staffers $500 million in severance, court rules

Prompt engineering became a hot job last year in the AI industry, but it seems Anthropic is now developing tools to at least partially automate it. Anthropic released several new…

Anthropic’s Claude adds a prompt playground to quickly improve your AI apps