The CHEF AI team at CES
About CHEF AI

We put the cook in the device.

We're hardware, software, and machine-learning engineers on a mission to save people time and headaches, with cooking that comes out consistent and automatic.

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Why we built this

Ovens are still dumb.

Dean was working late one night and forgot his salmon in his air fryer. His smoke detector went off, and he came downstairs to a black mess. His house had almost burned down. It left him wondering: why, in our modern day, does an oven still just run a timer and wait for you to remember to pull it out? Appliances went digital decades ago, but there's still nothing that can monitor your food, sense when it's done, and shut off on its own. The technology to do all three has existed for years, but nobody has bothered to bring it to the kitchen, so we did.

How we got here

From the first rig to a real appliance.

Where it started
01 · Where it started

An external 3D-printed chassis built for basket-type air fryers.

CES 2024
02 · CES 2024

The unit could recognize the food and read its temperature.

CES 2025
03 · CES 2025

We broke out the controls and integrated weight, RGB, and thermal onto a real device that could cook, to validate the results.

2026
04 · 2026

Co-developed into a production appliance. Now we're bringing up a pre-production board and engineering samples we can deploy.

The founders

AI meets hardware.

CHEF AI founders Dean Khormaei and Maxwell Deng
Dean Khormaei
Co-founder & CEO

Dean believes the best hardware disappears into the product. At Tesla he was a lead hardware engineer on Optimus and Cybertruck, taking complex mechanical systems from prototype to production. He studied Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington.

Maxwell Deng
Co-founder & CTO

Max builds the intelligence behind the cook. He spent his career on large-scale machine learning, most recently at HBO Max, and now leads CHEF AI's vision, thermal, and cook-control software. He holds a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania.

Core team
Max Chakhmatov
Max Chakhmatov
Software Infrastructure Engineer
Tesla Vehicle Software
Dr. Norman Tang
Dr. Norman Tang
Thermal Systems Engineer
Hanford Nuclear
Aaron Kemper
Aaron Kemper
Mechanical Engineer
Powerline design · Aquawolf
Lihua Lucy Xie
Lihua Lucy Xie
Senior Embedded Engineer
Thermal-camera specialist · Fluke
Eric Siu
Eric Siu
Senior Firmware Engineer
Tesla

See it cook your menu.

The fastest way to understand CHEF AI is to watch it cook on the food you actually serve, beside your current setup. About 30 minutes, on your own menu.

Book a demo

~30 min · on your own menu.