David Zhao

Co-Founder @livekit. Entrepreneur and engineer. I like computers and believe in hard money. #Bitcoin

[Binh Pham @pham_blnh]

we won the embodied ai hackathon at @southpkcommons last week

this is how we did it 🧵

[David Chen @chenosaurus]

Best way to kick off a week with the @LiveKit robotics team: win the @southpkcommons Embodied AI Hackathon the weekend before.

Over 48 hours, we really cooked something special. Distributed low latency inference (VLMs, ACT, MolmoAct 2), teleop, voice agent orchestration, all powered by @LiveKit.

[David Zhao @davidzh]

love this car

[Franz von Holzhausen @woodhaus2]

After nearly 18 years I can stop working on Model S and X. We put so much love into these products, but will continue to pour that into the future products. Thanks to everyone who believed in and supported these cars through the years. We strived for the best and will never stop. Saying goodbye to something great and making room for something even greater!

[LiveKit @livekit]

Ship a voice agent on any website with a single script tag.

The widget supports voice, video, screen share, and text chat. Configure branding, capabilities, and per-visitor context from the LiveKit Cloud dashboard. Works on Shopify, Webflow, WordPress, or any custom site.

[Zohaib Ahmed @zohaibahmed]

New Voice AI Model from @resembleai's Research Team: Dramabox! 🎭

A Voice AI model SHOULD give you two things, an oscar-worthy performance and a verifiable signature to prove it's yours.

DramaBox is the first model that does both.

Open Source, available today!

[David Zhao @davidzh]

@zohaibahmed @resembleai it's incredible this is OSS. congrats on the release!

[David Zhao @davidzh]

@posedscaredcity @livekit good eye. call screening is coming in the next rev. as is IVR -> human -> IVR -> human workflows.

[LiveKit @livekit]

Your outbound phone agent has 1-2 seconds to figure out if it's talking to a person, a voicemail, or an IVR.

We shipped Answering Machine Detection (AMD) in LiveKit Agents to do that for you so your agent knows when to keep talking, leave a message, use the keypad, or hang up.

[Mayor Matt Mahan @MattMahanSJ]

When I’m governor, we’ll build in California.

[David Zhao @davidzh]

@JustJake huge!! upwards!

[David Zhao @davidzh]

@Betula2024 @livekit @inworld_ai @cartesia it works with tts2 today!

[Tom Shapland @tom_shapland]

The killer feature on @livekit's new custom voices is automatic fallback to the same voice clone on another TTS provider if the primary TTS provider request fails.

The fun feature is how easy it is to hear the differences in a clone across different TTS providers.

[David Zhao @davidzh]

Incredible work by the Inworld team!

They fused an LLM backbone into their TTS, making it possible to prompt the TTS to express a full range of emotions.

Emotion steering hints like "[speak warmly, engaged, with a reflective tone]" gives the model enough information to synthesize the right expressions into speech.

[Inworld AI @inworld_ai]

Introducing Realtime TTS-2, a new generation of voice model built for realtime conversation.

It is the first voice model that hears the conversation, takes natural-language voice direction, holds one voice identity across over 100 languages, and speaks like a person who is paying attention.

The result is voice AI that feels as good as it sounds.

Try it out: https://t.co/80xL7AJveV
Learn More: https://t.co/PLUiAEFizP

[smallest.ai @smallest_AI]

Smallest AI is now live on @livekit

Lightning TTS and Pulse STT, both available natively in the LiveKit Agents framework.

→ Lightning TTS: SoTA conversational speech, ~100ms latency, 15 languages with mid-sentence code-switching, voice cloning from 10 seconds of audio

→ Pulse STT: 64ms TTFT, 32 languages, word-level timestamps, PII/PCI redaction

Plug it in, ship a voice agent.

Docs and cookbook in the thread.

[LiveKit @livekit]

We shipped structured data collection for voice agents.

Use data collection mode in Agent Builder, or Tasks and TaskGroups in our Agents SDKs.

Every session ends with a clean JSON payload for your CRM, form, or database.

Great for lead qualification, patient intake, and surveys.

[👩‍💻 Paige Bailey @DynamicWebPaige]

The expo floor at #googlecloudnext is crazy right now, make sure to catch all of the @googledeepmind and @GoogleStartups booths!

Shown below: robotics (with @EnchantedTools running Gemini Live from @GoogleAIStudio), TPUs, and our @livekit partners.

[Lina Colucci @lina_colucci]

We used to be one of the slowest models.
In 2 months, we became the fastest 🙌

This is what great engineering 🤝 research looks like

[David Zhao @davidzh]

just incredible

[Higgsfield AI 🧩 @higgsfield]

We just made a 23-MINUTE sci-fi pilot in 4 days.

And it is 100% AI.

[David Zhao @davidzh]

@garrytan use it with @livekit

[Chris Bakke @ChrisJBakke]

Running a company:

2020: can you survive a pandemic?

2021: still here? we’re going to give all of your competitors $100m series A rounds.

2022: wow, you made it? okay, all engineers cost $600,000/year now.

2023: nice job! okay, SVB failed and we’re going to take away your bank account.

2024: a survivor I see. but can you pivot from ai to crypto to defense tech back to ai-enabled defense tech in a 12 month period to stay relevant?

2025: unfortunately all of your competitors have raised $2b series B rounds. oh and only 500 engineers are relevant and they cost $100m/yr each.

2026: well, well, well. you’re still in business? let’s deploy the thunderclap of godlike LLMs from the heavens so all of your customers can rebuild your app in 2 hours. can you survive?