Earbuds That Think: Anker unveils soundcore Liberty 5 Pro and Liberty 5 Pro Max with Anker's First Neural-Net Chip

NEW YORK and BELLEVUE, Wash., May 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- For 80 years, every chip ever built has moved data back and forth between memory and processor - consuming more than 90 percent of available power before a single calculation begins. At Anker Day in New York today, Anker Innovations announced it has ended that for consumer hardware. THUS™, the company's first proprietary AI chip, computes directly inside NOR Flash memory, eliminating the transfer entirely - a neural-net compute-in-memory (CIM) architecture the company says is the first ever commercialized in a consumer device. The product carrying it, the soundcore Liberty 5 Pro, has already earned a Guinness World Records certification for the highest objectively measured speech quality score in TWS earbud history. Anker calls them Earbuds That Think.

THUS™: Breaking an 80-Year Assumption in Chip Design

Every chip built today descends from an architecture established in 1945 by mathematician John von Neumann. Its defining logic was divide and conquer: break any problem into discrete steps, translate those steps into code, and execute them one at a time. Memory and the processor can therefore be physically separated. Programs live in memory; the CPU fetches one instruction at a time, executes it and advances to the next.

AI breaks that assumption entirely. A neural network does not divide a problem into steps - it processes end-to-end, drawing on millions or billions of learned parameters all at once. Every inference requires every one of those parameters to make the round trip between memory and the processor. In a data center, that movement is an engineering cost. In a wearable device that is powered by a battery smaller than a fingernail, it is a wall: more than 90 percent of chip power is consumed by simply moving data.

Introducing THUS™ AI Chip Platform

The answer has long existed in nature. Neurons in the human brain do not separate where information is stored from where it is processed - they do both in the same place. THUS™ applies that same principle to silicon.

Rather than shuttling model parameters between physically separate memory and processor, THUS™ embeds computation directly inside NOR Flash memory cells. The model parameters never have to move. The energy previously consumed by that movement is redirected to actual computation. NOR Flash-based compute-in-memory also requires approximately one-sixth the physical footprint of SRAM-based alternatives, making it viable for the most constrained consumer devices.

"Every AI chip built until now stores the model on one side and does the computation on the other. To think, the device has to carry all those parameters across, many times per second, every single inference. THUS™ puts the computation where the model already lives. The model never has to move again."

                                                                                                                                                                                  - Steven Yang, Founder and CEO, Anker Innovations

Earbuds That Think: The First Consumer Products to Run THUS™ CIM AI

The soundcore Liberty 5 Pro and Liberty 5 Pro Max are the first two products to ship with the THUS™ chip. Their positioning is organized around three on-device intelligence layers the chip enables - understanding, adapting, and tuning - each representing a function earbuds could not credibly perform before neural-net AI became viable at this scale.

It Understands - Call Freely. Be Heard Clearly. / Meeting Ends With Plans, Not Messy Notes.

In April 2026, the soundcore Liberty 5 Pro earned Guinness World Records certification for the "Highest speech quality score (G-MOS) for TWS earbuds" in objective testing - the measurable proof of what it means for an earbud to truly understand its speaker. The Liberty 5 Pro Max features identical earbud hardware and achieves equivalent call performance.

Behind that result is a system built differently from the ground up. Conventional earbuds rely on microphone arrays alone to separate voice from noise - a process where both signals share the same medium (air), making clean isolation increasingly difficult as the acoustic environment grows louder or more complex.

The Liberty 5 Pro and Liberty 5 Pro Max deploy a 10-sensor matrix - eight MEMS microphones and two bone conduction sensors - feeding a large neural-net model running entirely on-device via the THUS™ chip. The MEMS array captures the full acoustic environment; the bone conduction sensors simultaneously detect the mechanical vibration of the speaker's cranial bones - a signal physically coupled to the speaker's voice and structurally independent of airborne noise. The THUS™ chip cross-references both streams simultaneously, producing a far more precise isolation than microphone-only systems can achieve. Call Freely. Be Heard Clearly.

AI Note-Taker (Liberty 5 Pro Max)

The Liberty 5 Pro Max extends the understanding layer into meetings. Its charging case - operated through a 1.78-inch AMOLED display - records sessions without a connected phone, then generates transcripts, speaker identification, and action items via the soundcore app. The case's 512MB of onboard flash supports up to 12 hours of local recording; cloud transcription deletes audio immediately upon completion, with local files encrypted via AES-256 and all transmission secured by TLS 1.3. Meeting Ends With Plans, Not Messy Notes.

It Adapts - Instant Focus, Zero-Pressure All Day Long

Adaptive ANC 4.0 monitors external and residual in-ear noise at 384,000 samples per second, adjusting cancellation depth in real time across noise types - low-frequency mechanical vibration, mid-frequency office ambient, high-frequency voice - while simultaneously managing the in-ear pressure that sustained fixed-level ANC typically generates, reducing listening fatigue over extended use. Rated at up to 2x deeper cancellation than the Liberty 4 Pro.

It Tunes - Pure Sound, Just Right

HearID 5.0 builds a personal EQ profile from an in-app hearing test. AI Sound Enhancement reconstructs frequency content lost in Bluetooth compression, restoring up to 65% of the audio quality typically discarded in wireless transmission.

Both models: three-device Multipoint connectivity, Apple Find My, Google Fast Pair, IP55 dust and water resistance, Bluetooth 6.1. Battery: 6.5 hours with ANC on, 28 hours total with the charging case.

Pricing and Availability

The Liberty 5 Pro is available starting today for SGD 239 in Singapore on Shopee and Lazada, RM 699 in Malaysia on Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop, and ฿5,999 in Thailand on Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop, in Pearl Blue, Pearl White, Midnight Black and Rose Gold.

The Liberty 5 Pro Max is available starting today for SGD 299 in Singapore on Shopee and Lazada, RM 899 in Malaysia on Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop, and ฿7,999 in Thailand on Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop, in Titanium-Gold and Black.

15 Years, One Promise

The Liberty 5 Pro series launches at a milestone for Anker Innovations. For 15 years, Anker soundcore has been driven by a single promise: Seeking Ultimate Innovation in audio experience backed by the confidence of an 18-month warranty.

About soundcore

soundcore is a smart audio brand under Anker Innovations, committed to providing an immersive audio and video experience with premium wireless headphones, indoor and outdoor Bluetooth speakers and high-definition projectors. Soundcore is the world's No.1* wireless headphone brand by shipment volume among mainstream premium audio brands. For more information visit www.soundcore.com.

About Anker Innovations

Anker Innovations is a global consumer technology company driven by ultimate innovation, creating products that help people power, create, connect, and live more freely. Founded in 2011, Anker Innovations serves more than 200 million consumers across 146 countries and regions. Learn more at anker.com.

The Anker logo is a registered trademark of Anker Innovations.

DISCLAIMER

Statements in this news release that are not statements of historical fact may include forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of the company. We wish to caution you that such statements are just predictions and that actual events or results may differ materially. The Company reserves all of its rights.

[1] All performance figures are based on internal Anker lab tests. The 150x AI computing power figure applies specifically to the environmental noise cancellation task and reflects the shift from rule-based DSP to neural-net AI processing. It is not a general performance claim and does not reflect a process node upgrade.

soundcore Liberty 5 Pro was certified by Guinness World Records in April 2026 as the "Highest speech quality score (G-MOS) for TWS earbuds (objective test)."

[2] Source: Euromonitor International (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., in terms of mainstream premium audio brands' global shipment volume of wireless headphones in 2025; mainstream premium audio brands refer to brands with ≥75% of revenues from audio equipments (headphones, speakers, etc.) and meet the criteria of mid-to-high-end brands in terms of pricing, brand positioning, and distribution channels; wireless headphones are headphones that pair with electronic devices (mobile phone, computer, etc.) using wireless connection technology (e.g., Bluetooth); research completed in Mar. 2026.

SOURCE Anker Innovations