Anker made its own chip to bring AI to all its products

The Verge / 4/22/2026

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Key Points

  • Anker announced the “Thus” custom processor aimed at enabling local (on-device) AI across its audio devices, mobile accessories, and IoT products.
  • The company claims Thus is the world’s first neural-net compute-in-memory AI audio chip, designed to reduce power usage and shrink chip size versus conventional approaches.
  • Anker’s core technical premise is that AI parameters don’t need to be shuttled back and forth between memory and compute during inference, which the CEO says improves efficiency.
  • By integrating AI capability directly into smaller, lower-power devices, the chip targets broader deployment of AI features without relying solely on the cloud.
  • The announcement signals an industry shift toward specialized edge AI hardware and vertical integration by consumer electronics brands.
An image of the Anker Thus chip.

Anker has announced its own custom silicon that the company says will bring local AI to audio devices, mobile accessories, and IoT devices. The Thus processor is the world's first neural-net compute-in-memory AI audio chip, which is smaller than traditional chips, and requires less power to run complex computations. That makes it an attractive solution for smaller devices.

When comparing Thus to existing chips, Anker CEO Steven Yang said, "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 infere …

Read the full story at The Verge.