Wall Street Journal Hires Max Zeff to Cover Artificial Intelligence

The Wall Street Journal has hired Max Zeff to cover artificial intelligence, adding a technology journalist with experience reporting on the companies, executives and policy issues shaping the rapidly expanding AI industry.

Zeff will join the Journal next week after serving as a senior writer at Wired, where he covers the business of artificial intelligence.

His move to the Journal continues a career focused heavily on emerging technology and the commercial development of AI, including reporting on startups, technology executives, regulation and online platforms.

Before joining Wired, Zeff was a senior reporter at TechCrunch, where he covered startups and the business leaders behind the AI boom. His reporting included breaking news on companies and executives as investment and commercial activity accelerated across the sector.

Zeff previously worked at Gizmodo, covering artificial intelligence policy and content moderation. That experience adds a regulatory and platform-governance component to a reporting background that has increasingly focused on the business mechanics of AI.

Earlier in his career, Zeff interned at Bloomberg, where he wrote some of the news organization’s early coverage of the Silicon Valley Bank crisis.

At the Wall Street Journal, Zeff will join a newsroom covering AI as both a technology story and a major business and investment theme. The beat spans companies developing foundation models and AI applications as well as the infrastructure, capital and corporate strategies supporting their deployment.

His background across Wired, TechCrunch and Gizmodo gives him experience covering several sides of that market, from startup formation and executive strategy to policy questions surrounding the technology.

The appointment adds another dedicated AI reporter to the Journal as competition among technology companies continues to drive investment in models, computing infrastructure, software and new AI-enabled products.

Zeff is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts. He is expected to begin his new role at The Wall Street Journal next week.