soundcore is teeing up a new flagship earbud generation built around Anker's first in-house AI chip, with the formal reveal pencilled in for Anker Day in New York on 21 May 2026. The brand has briefed Malaysian press in advance, signalling that the Malaysian launch will follow closely.
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The chip behind the launch
The piece of silicon doing the heavy lifting is called Thus, and Anker built it specifically to run neural networks inside battery-powered consumer devices. The brand claims Thus delivers 150 times the AI compute power for noise cancellation compared with previous soundcore models, a step change rather than a refinement.
Thus uses a compute-in-memory architecture built on NOR Flash. Instead of shuttling model parameters between memory and a separate processor, the calculations happen inside the flash cells themselves. The practical upshot Anker pitches: about a sixth of the physical footprint of an equivalent SRAM-based design, which matters when the host device is the size of an earbud shell. The chip can support millions of parameters on-device with no cloud round trip.
What the chip enables for users
The headline feature so far is Clear Calls. It pairs a large on-device neural network with eight microphones and a bone conduction sensor to isolate the wearer's voice in loud environments. Anker is positioning it against the call-quality story that Apple, Samsung and Bose have all leaned on for their flagship earbuds.
The 15-year-old soundcore line has historically punched above its price tag on active noise cancellation and battery life. A custom-silicon ANC story would let soundcore tell a real differentiation pitch instead of competing on spec-sheet parity.
Which products land first
Anker has not named the launch SKUs publicly, but pre-event leaks point to the Liberty 5 Pro Max and Liberty 5 Pro as the first two earbuds carrying the Thus chip. Indicative US pricing in those leaks sat at USD229.99 for the Pro Max and USD169.99 for the Pro. Malaysian pricing is unconfirmed; soundcore typically prices Malaysian launches within a 10 to 20 per cent band of US RRP after tax adjustments.
Beyond the audio launch, Anker says Thus is the first step in a multi-year plan to push on-device AI through its product lineup. The brand has outlined an order of operations: earbuds and headphones first, then mobile accessories such as power banks and chargers, then home and IoT devices.
What to watch for after 21 May
The 21 May Anker Day in New York is where soundcore is expected to confirm the launch lineup, final pricing and on-sale dates. For Malaysian buyers, the relevant secondary signals are when Lazada and Shopee Malaysia list the new SKUs, and which feature subset crosses over to lower-priced soundcore tiers in the months that follow. Productnation will update with Malaysian pricing and availability after the formal announcement lands.