Intellexa’s Predator spyware can hide iOS recording indicators while secretly streaming camera and microphone feeds to its operators.

The malware does not exploit any iOS vulnerability but leverages previously obtained kernel-level access to hijack system indicators that would otherwise expose its surveillance operation.

Apple introduced recording indicators on the status bar in iOS 14 to alert users when the camera or microphone is in use, displaying a green or an orange dot, respectively.

US-sanctioned surveillance firm Intellexa developed the Predator commercial spyware and delivered it in attacks that exploited Apple and Chrome zero-day flaws and through 0-click infection mechanisms.

While its ability to suppress camera and microphone activity indicators is well known, it was unclear how the mechanism worked.

How Predator hides recording

Researchers at mobile device management company Jamf analyzed Predator samples and documented the process of hiding the privacy-related indicators.

According to Jamf, Predator hides all recording indicators on iOS 14 by using a single hook function (‘HiddenDot::setupHook()’) inside SpringBoard, invoking the method whenever sensor activity changes (upon camera or microphone activation).

By intercepting it, Predator prevents sensor activity updates from ever reaching the UI layer, so the green or red dot never lights up.

“The target method _handleNewDomainData: is called by iOS whenever sensor activity changes – camera turns on, microphone activates, etc.,” Jamf researchers explain.

“By hooking this single method, Predator intercepts ALL sensor status updates before they reach the indicator display system.”

The hook works by nullifying the object responsible for sensor updates (SBSensorActivityDataProvider in SpringBoard). In Objective-C, calls to a null object are silently ignored, so SpringBoard never processes the camera or microphone activation, and no indicator appears.

Because SBSensorActivityDataProvider aggregates all sensor activity, this single hook disables both the camera and the microphone indicators.

The researchers also found “dead code” that attempted to hook ‘SBRecordingIndicatorManager’ directly. However, it doesn’t execute, and is likely an earlier development path that was abandoned in favor of the better approach that intercepts sensor data upstream.

In the case of VoIP recordings, which Predator also supports, the module responsible lacks an indicator-suppression mechanism, so it relies on the HiddenDot function for stealth.

Jamf further explains that camera access is enabled through a separate module that locates internal camera functions using ARM64 instruction pattern matching and Pointer Authentication Code (PAC) redirection to bypass camera permission checks.

Without indicators lighting up on the status bar, the spyware activity remains completely hidden to the regular user.

Jamf notes that technical analysis reveals the signs of the malicious processes, such as unexpected memory mappings or exception ports in SpringBoard and mediaserverd, breakpoint-based hooks, and audio files written by mediaserverd to unusual paths.

BleepingComputer has contacted Apple with a request for a comment on Jamf’s findings, but the company never responded.

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The 1996 Nissan NISMO 400R is one of those rare, ultra exclusive performance cars that came out of Japan in the 1990s and currently up for auction. To be honest, NISMO built this model mostly as a tribute to their work on the Le Mans GT-R LM. Engineers took the R33 Skyline GT-R V-Spec base and made it into something far more capable than a production car.

The engine, a twin-turbo inline-six, was bored from 2.6 to 2.8 liters, resulting in the RBX-GT2 engine built by REINIK. This resulted in it generating an impressive 400 horsepower and 346 pound-feet of torque, well above the unofficial Japanese limit of 276 horsepower. The acceleration from zero to 60 mph takes around four seconds, and the top speed is 186 mph.

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They tackled the challenge with a twin-plate clutch and a six-speed manual transmission to handle the power coming from that behemoth. The suspension was also updated with NISMO springs and Bilstein dampers, which reduced the ride height by nearly two inches in order to make the car drive more sharply. The brakes on the V-Spec base were fine, but NISMO chose to enhance them with their own pads. The styling has also been updated, with bigger fenders, new bumpers to increase airflow, side skirts, a carbon fiber hood, and a large rear spoiler. Then they slapped on some three-piece Rays LM-GT1 wheels.

Prior to the R33 shutdown, just 44 units were built, compared to the original plan of 100 units. Because of its rarity, the 400R has become the ultimate collector’s item. The majority of them were held in Japan for many years.

This specific car carries the chassis number 008, indicating that it is the eighth car ever manufactured. It’s a true show stopper, with QM1 White exterior and a black interior with plenty of red stitching. There are just 16,313 kilometers (10,136 miles) on the odometer and was initially registered in July 1996. It remained in Japan for more than 30 years until being shipped to Canada in 2023 and, finally, to the United States in 2024. Last year, this car won the Hagerty Car Culture Award at the Amelia Concours.

Broad Arrow Auctions will offer this 400R at The Amelia Auction on March 7, 2026, in conjunction with the Amelia Concours. They estimate the price between $900,000 and $1,100,000, demonstrating the increasing value of low-mileage and documented cases. A similar vehicle sold for $995,000 at the RM Sotheby’s Monterey auction in 2025.
[Source]

Tesla is still on the hook for $243 million after a US judge rejected the EV maker’s bid to overturn a jury verdict from last year. On Friday, US District Judge Beth Bloom upheld the jury’s decision to hold Tesla partially responsible for a deadly crash that happened in 2019 and involved the self-driving Autopilot feature.

The judge added that there was enough evidence to support the jury’s verdict, which was delivered in August 2025 and ordered Tesla to pay millions in compensatory and punitive damages to the two victims in the case. Judge Bloom added that Tesla didn’t present any new arguments to dispute the decision.

While the case has been moving along recently, the incident dates back to several years ago when the driver of a Model S, George McGee, was using Tesla’s Autopilot feature while bending down to retrieve a dropped phone. The Model S then crashed into an SUV that was parked on a shoulder, where Naibel Benavides Leon and Dillon Angulo were standing aside. Benavides was killed in the crash, while Angulo was severely injured.

Tesla hasn’t publicly commented on Judge Bloom’s decision yet, but it won’t be a surprise to see the company appeal the latest ruling with a higher court. Tesla’s lawyers previously tried to pin the blame on the driver, claiming that the Model S and Autopilot weren’t defective. As this major case plays out, Tesla is also facing several investigations from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for both its Autopilot and Full-Self Driving features.

Gather ‘round, it’s time to catch up on the latest batch of Engadget reviews. Whether you missed our in-depth testing of Sony’s latest flagship earbuds or a truly unique ASUS laptop, I’ve compiled our recent reviews so you can get up to speed quickly. Read on for the list that also includes a love letter to a tiny camera and another VPN option that worth considering.

Sony WF-1000XM6

Sony/Engadget

Sony’s flagship earbuds are still near the top of the heap, but the competition has caught up.

Pros

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• Full, detailed sound
• Tons of features
• Responsive touch controls

Cons

• Price went up (again)
• ANC performance lags behind the competition
• Fit can be an issue
• Subpar call quality

Sony’s 1000X earbuds have always been the top pick in our best wireless earbuds guide. With the M6 though, the company doesn’t do enough to clearly separate itself from the competition like it has in the past. “The two most obvious places the company is lagging behind the competition is ANC performance and overall voice quality, not to mention my continued dissatisfaction with the fit that Sony’s foam tips provide,” I wrote.

ASUS Zenbook Duo (2026)

ASUS / Engadget

While it’s a bit pricey, the added convenience and productivity of the Zenbook Duo’s dual-screen design is more than worth the premium.

Pros

• Two gorgeous OLED displays
• More compact design than the original
• Surprisingly good battery
• Unique form factor

Cons

• A bit pricey
• No SD card slot

If you’re looking for something unique in your next laptop, the ASUS Zenbook Duo is worth considering. Dual screens? Yep. Detachable keyboard? Sure. Good battery life? It does that too. “I’m a believer that one day people will eventually embrace typing on screens with laptops just like they have for smartphones,” senior reporter Sam Rutherford explained. “However, even if you’re not willing to make that jump just yet, the Zenbook Duo still has all of its bases covered.”

Kodak Charmera

A tiny $30 camera was too cute for our editors to resist. Despite the subpar images it captures, they’re still smitten with the thing. “I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much I’m enjoying the Charmera experience,” weekend editor Its crunchy photos are just good enough to feel like they’re successfully preserving a moment in time. And being so tiny, it’s really convenient to bring everywhere.”

Mullvad VPN

Senior writer Sam Champman’s latest VPN review is Mullvad, which he says is often regarded as one of the best in terms of overall privacy. “It’s not trying to be an everything app — it does privacy and does it well,” he noted. “Of course, it has its own compromises. It’s solidly in the middle of the speed pack and occasionally trips up when unblocking streaming sites. The lack of any protocols other than WireGuard grates on me a bit, since it reduces the user’s options for troubleshooting.”

An FBI informant helped run the Incognito dark web market and allegedly approved the sale of fentanyl-laced pills, including those from a dealer linked to a confirmed death, WIRED reported this week. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Customs and Border Protection officers sparked a Department of Justice probe. Documents say that CBP officers in the US Virgin Islands were still friendly with Epstein years after his 2008 conviction, illustrating the infamous sex offender’s tactics for cultivating allies.

WIRED published a guide detailing experts’ tips and preferred tools for surveillance-resistant organizing and collaboration. In opsec fails, comments and other metadata left on a PDF detailing Homeland Security’s proposal to build “mega” detention and processing centers reveal the DHS personnel involved in the plan’s creation. And the Department of Homeland Security is making moves to combine its face and fingerprint technologies into a centralized, searchable database across all its agencies.

Fears about possible drug cartel drone activity over Texas sparked a recent airspace shutdown in New Mexico and El Paso, Texas, but the episode ultimately underscored the challenges of safely deploying anti-drone weapons near cities. A database left accessible to anyone online contained billions of records, including passwords and Social Security numbers. The situation is far from unique, but it underscores ongoing potential identity-theft risk since it appeared that some of the data has not yet been exploited by criminals.

If you’re looking to make $10,000, the Fulu Foundation—a nonprofit that pays out bounties for removing user-hostile features—is on the hunt for a way to use Ring cameras while preventing them from sending data to Amazon. And the Mexican city of Guadalupe, which will host portions of the 2026 World Cup, will deploy four new robot dogs to help provide security during matches at BBVA Stadium.

But wait, there’s more! Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

We at WIRED have recommended password managers for years. They are, arguably, the only practical and convenient system for creating and implementing unique, sufficiently strong passwords across every online account in your life. But the risk—at least when using cloud-based password managers that back up your credentials and make them accessible across devices—is that the password manager company itself becomes a point of vulnerability. If one of these companies is breached or suffers a data leak, those flaws could expose an untold number of secret credentials.

Password manager companies have responded to those fears with promises of “zero knowledge” systems in which they claim credentials are encrypted so that even they can’t access them in an unencrypted state. But a new study from security researchers at ETH Zurich and USI Lugano shows how frequently those claims are showing cracks—or failing altogether if a malicious insider or hacker is sufficiently skilled at exploiting cryptographic flaws.

The researchers specifically analyzed password managers from Bitwarden, Dashlane, and LastPass—though they warn their findings likely apply to others, too—and found that they could often gain access to users’ credentials. In some cases, they could access users’ entire “vault” of passwords or even gain the ability to write to those vaults at will. The cryptographic vulnerabilities they found varied between password managers and existed only when certain features were enabled, such as the key escrow systems that allow the backup and recovery of passwords. But they also say many of the flaws they found were relatively simple and show the lack of scrutiny around password managers’ “zero knowledge” claims. Read the full research paper here.

Virtually no part of American society, it increasingly seems, has escaped mention in the newly released emails of the late convicted pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein—including the cybersecurity and technology community represented at the Defcon hacker conference. Defcon this week officially banned three people whose ties to Epstein had come to light in the Justice Department’s incomplete and highly redacted release of documents related to Epstein: cybersecurity entrepreneur Vincent Iozzo—who had already been removed from review board on the website of Black Hat, Defcon’s more corporate sister conference—as well as former MIT Media Lab director Joichi Ito and tech investor Pablos Holman. (A spokesperson for Iozzo said the ban was “performative” and not based on any “wrongdoing,” in a statement to TechCrunch, while Holman and Ito didn’t respond to its requests for comment.) All three men had extensive interactions with Epstein, including long after he was exposed as a sex offender and trafficker both in court and in extensive media reporting.

More than two decades ago, the government domain “freedom.gov” was used for news and “victory” information about the war in Iraq. Since the domain was reregistered on January 12, after years being offline, it has been part of a State Department effort to create an anti-censorship “online portal,” according to a Reuters report this week.

The report says the portal may have been created to “enable people in Europe and elsewhere” to see content banned by their governments, citing hate speech- and terrorism-related content as examples. The website may incorporate VPN technology to get around geolocation blocks. The development of the site, which could help to further fracture differing internet freedom regimes and political tensions between the US and Europe, comes at a time when many US government-funded internet freedom programs have been shut down.

As the 2026 Winter Olympics come to a close, a whole new game is afoot: the mad dash to make money on exclusive memorabilia. When the Games are over, most of the event’s coolest collectibles will become very hard to find, plundered by scalpers and bargain hunters and only available through online marketplaces like eBay and Vinted. And if the eye-popping prices already placed on the gear are any indication, they’re going to be quite valuable.

Of all the Milano Cortina Olympics memorabilia that’s hit the internet so far, the plushies of mascots Milo and Tina and the Swatch watches given to volunteers have proven to be standouts. Pins are also proving popular, particularly Snoop Dogg’s special edition and the ones dedicated to the torchbearers.

Originally, the Milo and Tina stuffed animals ranged in price from €15 to €50 (about $18 to $60), depending on size. Now the smallest stoat plushies are going for as much as three times their original price, and the bigger ones are four times as expensive as they originally were. (Some can still be ordered on the Olympics shop at their original prices. But there is one drawback: As of this writing, some of them may not be delivered until June.)

The Swatch watches, meanwhile, were only given to volunteers and not available for sale. Never-worn Swatches still in the box are already showing up for sale for anywhere from €200 to €500 ($235 to $590).

At least one of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 smartphones give to athletes has shown up on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $1,680.

As of this writing, you can still get Olympics souvenir pins on the Games’ official online shop. Prices there start at around €15, but resellers are putting them up for twice as much. Limited-edition pins from sponsors like Samsung go for around €100 ($118). WIRED Italia spotted pins given to Olympic torchbearers online for around €600 ($707). Also available? Replicas of Olympic medals, which start at around €50 for a single medal and €150 to €200 ($177 to $236) for a complete set.

The latest episode of The Leaders’ Room podcast season four features Rathnait Long, distinguished fellow of technology at Macom Technology Solutions. This series is created in partnership with IDA Ireland.

Once again in season four of The Leaders’ Room podcast, we get to know the leaders of some of the most influential multinationals in tech, life sciences and innovation, as well as getting insights into their leadership styles and the high-tech trends they see coming down the line.

In this latest episode, we speak to Rathnait Long, distinguished fellow of technology at Macom Technology Solutions, about her distinguished career in engineering, and now in leadership at the Lowell, Massachusetts-based semiconductor company with operations in Cork, Ireland. It’s a fascinating and wide-ranging chat about the transition from academia to industry, the imperfect but developing tool that is AI, and the future of technology.

Macom designs and manufactures semiconductors for a wide range of different sectors – including telecommunications, data centres, industrial and defence – so Rathnait has a bird’s eye perspective on how technology companies keep innovating amid rapid technological shifts.

Macom has an important hub in Cork, which has a strong focus on design, but is also core to other aspects of Macom’s international operations, so we discuss how Ireland fits into the larger multinational story for Macom.

Long shared her quandary at various stages of her career, whether to stick with academia or get out into industry – she clearly thrived in both. She tells us how she ultimately felt that draw to be involved in the application of the research in an industry setting.

She clearly gained enormously from the opportunity she had to spend her postdoc years in Stanford, and it struck me listening to her that many of today’s engineering students may not feel as welcomed to the US in the current climate, which is unfortunate.

It is also a reminder of  how vital it is that Ireland is building even more superb postdoc opportunities and experiences here at home and in Europe. Having spoken recently to Minister James Lawless, TD and the new head of Research Ireland Diarmuid O’Brien on this subject, that is certainly Ireland’s ambition.

Long’s identity as an engineer is clearly central to everything she does. She is focused on problem-solving, and seeing her ideas and research translated into real-world applications. What is clear throughout the discussion is how neatly that translates into her pragmatic approach to leadership.

We’re grateful to all our interviewees again this season, for taking the time out of busy schedules to come into the studio and share their insights and their intelligence with us. And a big thanks as ever to our partners IDA Ireland who make this series possible.

The Leaders’ Room podcast is released fortnightly and can be found by searching for ‘The Leaders’ Room’ wherever you get your podcasts. For those who prefer their audio with visuals, filmed versions of the podcast interviews are all available here on SiliconRepublic.com.

Check out The Leaders’ Room podcast for in-depth insights from some of Ireland’s top leaders. Listen now on Spotify, on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

These robot vacuums are ones that tested well, scoring at least a 7 overall rating, or that might be the right fit for a specific situation.

Yeedi S16 Plus

Yeedi S16 Plus: The Yeedi S16 Plus distinguishes itself with the best pet hair pickup we’ve tested, completely clearing our hardwood test area. It also has one of the most user-friendly app interfaces available. However, it falls short of our main list due to significant failures in obstacle avoidance and inconsistent cleaning power on specific surfaces. In our navigation tests, it avoided only two of six objects, running over a sock and two types of simulated pet waste, which makes it a risky choice for homes where messes might occur.

While its overall sand pickup average is a decent 51.51%, its specific performance lags behind top-tier competitors. It achieved a mediocre 86.13% pickup rate on hardwood and struggled significantly on midpile carpet, with only a 17.39% success rate. Consequently, despite its sleek design and effective self-rinsing Ozmo mop, we recommend models like the Eufy E28 for people who need reliable obstacle avoidance.

Yeedi M14 Plus

Yeedi M14 Plus: The Yeedi M14 Plus is a standout choice for smart navigation, tying for the best obstacle avoidance score in our testing by successfully evading five out of six common hazards, including pet waste and socks. It pairs these smarts with excellent hardwood performance, removing 92.7% of sand in our lab tests, and has what our testers rated as the most intuitive and comprehensive app interface available. With a base station that offers self-emptying and hot water mop washing, it’s a highly capable automated cleaner for homes with hard floors.

However, the M14 Plus falls short of our main list due to its abysmal performance on soft surfaces; it managed a dismal 8.7% pickup rate on midpile carpet, making it unsuitable for homes with rugs. Its navigation coverage was also below average at 71.18%, leaving more missed spots than top-tier competitors like the Mova V50 or Dreame X50. While often available at a deep discount, its high retail price of $1,199 makes the iRobot Roomba 205 DustCompactor a stronger value proposition for most buyers.

Roborock Qrevo Curv

Robock Qrevo Curv: The Roborock Qrevo Curv is easily recognizable by its distinctive egg-shaped base station and has an AdaptiLift chassis that helps it cross high thresholds. In our lab tests, it proved to be a specialist for homes with plush rugs, achieving a 35.65% sand pickup rate on midpile carpet. This was the highest score recorded in its specific test batch and the second-highest midpile score we’ve seen to date, trailing only the Mova V50.

However, the Qrevo Curv misses our main list due to its underwhelming performance on hard floors and poor hazard detection. It removed only 75.91% of sand from hardwood, a mediocre result compared to top-tier competitors, which consistently score above 90%. Additionally, its navigation systems failed to identify common clutter. It avoided only one out of six obstacles in our avoidance test. Our lab experts also noted that its cleaning path was inefficient, with heat maps showing it focused heavily on the room’s edges while neglecting the center.

Eufy E25

Eufy E25: The Eufy E25 stands out as one of the better obstacle-avoidance systems for robot vacuums. It successfully evaded five out of six hazards, including simulated pet waste and cords — a feat matched only by its sibling, the E28, and the Yeedi M14 Plus. While setup was a breeze, thanks to an app that instantly recognized the device, its cleaning power didn’t quite match its brains. It managed a respectable 85.4% sand pickup on hardwood but struggled significantly on soft surfaces, recording the lowest low-pile carpet score in its batch at just 31.88%.

We ultimately excluded the E25 from our main list because it offers less utility than the Eufy E28 for a similar or higher price. “I would recommend the Eufy E28 over this unit because it offers the carpet-cleaning functionality with similar cleaning abilities,” noted lab technician Schylar Breitenstein. With a price tag hovering around $1,300 without sales and a midpile carpet pickup rate of only 12.17%, it is hard to justify the E25 when the E28 provides the same elite obstacle avoidance plus a unique portable carpet cleaner for better value.

iRobot Roomba 705 Max

iRobot Roomba 705 Max: The iRobot Roomba 705 Max distinguishes itself with room coverage, with an impressive 86.36% score. It is a thorough cleaner on hard floors, picking up 92.7% of sand, and it has a compact, stylish base station that auto-empties the dustbin without dominating your floor plan. If you have a tidy home with predominantly hard floors and want a vacuum that won’t miss a spot, the 705 Max offers the thorough cleaning pattern iRobot is known for.

However, we excluded it from our main list because its obstacle-avoidance technology is virtually nonexistent compared to modern standards. In our lab tests, it failed to avoid a single object, running over everything from socks to simulated pet waste — an odd flaw for a robot touting its AI vision. Additionally, it lacks the mopping capabilities standard on most robots in this price class. Our lab team critiqued the app as “underdeveloped,” noting that the expensive warranty add-ons feel “like an unnecessary paywall.” For a smarter robot that can actually dodge trouble, we recommend the Eufy E28.

3i S10 Ultra

3i S10 Ultra: We haven’t reviewed many robot vacuums from 3i, but the company has some unique offerings, including the S10 Ultra, which it says is the first water recycling robot vacuum in the world. What that means is that it’s capable of purifying and distilling its own wastewater extracted from the robot, as well as using water vapor and condensation from the air to refill the robot’s water tank with clean water. It’s a fascinating implementation that can help cut down on water wasted on mopping.

In terms of performance, the S10 Ultra is a capable robot vacuum, removing 93.45% of sand from hardwood floor, which is the third highest score on our list. However, carpet performance wasn’t as good, at 37.68% low-pile and 17.68% midpile, resulting in a 49.6% average. That said, it has all the key features you’d expect from a higher-end robot vacuum, including advanced lidar navigation, dirt and liquid detection, a self-cleaning spinning roller mop and AI obstacle avoidance. Our lab technician, Schylar Breitenstein, noted that the app wasn’t very user-friendly and that she had issues with connectivity to Wi-Fi. Obstacle avoidance was also a disappointment, with a complete failure for all six obstacles. The bulky and heavy base station weighs 50 pounds and takes up significant space. All this keeps it off our best list.

Ecovacs Deebot X9 Pro Omni

Ecovacs Deebot X9 Pro Omni: The Ecovacs Deebot X9 Pro Omni distinguishes itself with reliable carpet detection that correctly ramps up suction when transitioning from hard floors to rugs, a feature our lab noted isn’t always consistent in this category. In terms of raw cleaning power, it performed decently, removing 88.32% of sand from hardwood floors and securing the third-highest midpile carpet pickup score in its test batch at 20.87%. Our testers also appreciated its navigation around furniture, noting that it “navigates well around chair legs” and easily cleared our 4-inch threshold tests.

However, the X9 Pro Omni misses our main list because its performance doesn’t justify its premium price tag. Despite claims of AI avoidance, it only successfully dodged two out of six obstacles in our hazard gauntlet. Furthermore, its room coverage was a middling 76.42%, with lab technicians observing that it “seems to clean in one direction” without the cross-hatch pattern that ensures a deeper clean. With a total average pickup score of 51.47%, it is a capable cleaner, but lacks the elite efficiency of top contenders such as the Mova V50.

Monsaga MS1 Max

Monsaga MS1 Max: The Monsaga MS1 Max caught our eye as a potentially affordable option that doesn’t skimp on features, offering lidar navigation and a self-emptying base station for a midrange price. In our lab testing, it actually punched above its weight class on hardwood floors, removing an impressive 92.7% of sand — a score that rivals some of our top picks, including the Yeedi M14 Plus. Our testers also appreciated the petite, lightweight base station, noting it was “easily transportable” compared to the bulky docks typical of this category.

However, the MS1 Max falls short of a recommendation due to what our lab team described as “atrocious” pet hair performance; hair became hopelessly tangled around the main brush and was scattered around the room rather than collected. It also struggled significantly on softer surfaces, managing only 44.06% pickup on low-pile carpet and a dismal 4.35% on midpile. Furthermore, its navigation smarts didn’t hold up in our hazard tests; the robot failed to avoid a single object in our six-item gauntlet, running over everything from cords to simulated pet waste.

Data centers for AI are turning the world of power generation on its head. There isn’t enough power capacity on the grid to even come close to how much energy is needed for the number being built. And traditional transmission and distribution networks aren’t efficient enough to take full advantage of all the power available. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), annual transmission and distribution losses average about 5 percent. The rate is much higher in some other parts of the world. Hence, hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure are investigating every avenue to gain more power and raise efficiency.

Microsoft, for example, is extolling the potential virtues of high-temperature superconductors (HTS) as a replacement for copper wiring. According to the company, HTS can improve energy efficiency by reducing transmission losses, increasing the resiliency of electrical grids, and limiting the impact of data centers on communities by reducing the amount of space required to move power.

“Because superconductors take up less space to move large amounts of power, they could help us build cleaner, more compact systems,” Alastair Speirs, the general manager of global infrastructure at Microsoft wrote in a blog post.

Copper is a good conductor, but current encounters resistance as it moves along the line. This generates heat, lowers efficiency, and restricts how much current can be moved. HTS largely eliminates this resistance factor, as it’s made of superconducting materials that are cooled to cryogenic temperatures. (Despite the name, high-temperature superconductors still rely on frigid temperatures—albeit significantly warmer than those required by traditional superconductors.)

The resulting cables are smaller and lighter than copper wiring, don’t lower voltage as they transmit current, and don’t produce heat. This fits nicely into the needs of AI data centers that are trying to cram massive electrical loads into a tiny footprint. Fewer substations would also be needed. According to Speirs, next-gen superconducting transmission lines deliver capacity that is an order of magnitude higher than conventional lines at the same voltage level.

Microsoft is working with partners on the advancement of this technology including an investment of US $75 million into Veir, a superconducting power technology developer. Veir’s conductors use HTS tape, most commonly based on a class of materials known as rare-earth barium copper oxide (REBCO). REBCO is a ceramic superconducting layer deposited as a thin film on a metal substrate, then engineered into a rugged conductor that can be assembled into power cables.

“The key distinction from copper or aluminum is that, at operating temperature, the superconducting layer carries current with almost no electrical resistance, enabling very high current density in a much more compact form factor,” says Tim Heidel, Veir’s CEO and co-founder.

Liquid Nitrogen Cooling in Data Centers

Ruslan Nagimov, the principal infrastructure engineer for Cloud Operations and Innovation at Microsoft, stands near the world’s first HTS-powered rack prototype.Microsoft

HTS cables still operate at cryogenic temperatures, so cooling must be integrated into the power delivery system design. Veir maintains a low operating temperature using a closed-loop liquid nitrogen system: The nitrogen circulates through the length of the cable, exits at the far end, is re-cooled, and then recirculated back to the start.

“Liquid nitrogen is a plentiful, low cost, safe material used in numerous critical commercial and industrial applications at enormous scale,” says Heidel. “We are leveraging the experience and standards for working with liquid nitrogen proven in other industries to design stable, data center solutions designed for continuous operation, with monitoring and controls that fit critical infrastructure expectations rather than lab conditions.”

HTS cable cooling can either be done within the data center or externally. Heidel favors the latter as that minimizes footprint and operational complexity indoors. Liquid nitrogen lines are fed into the facility to serve the superconductors. They deliver power to where it’s needed and the cooling system is managed like other facility subsystem.

Rare earth materials, cooling loops, cryogenic temperatures—all of this adds considerably to costs. Thus, HTS isn’t going to replace copper in the vast majority of applications. Heidel says the economics are most compelling where power delivery is constrained by space, weight, voltage drop, and heat.

“In those cases, the value shows up at the system level: smaller footprints, reduced resistive losses, and more flexibility in how you route power,” says Heidel. “As the technology scales, costs should improve through higher-volume HTS tape manufacturing and better yields, and also through standardization of the surrounding system hardware, installation practices, and operating playbooks that reduce design complexity and deployment risk.”

AI data centers are becoming the perfect proving ground for this approach. Hyperscalers are willing to spend to develop higher-efficiency systems. They can balance spending on development against the revenue they might make by delivering AI services broadly.

“HTS manufacturing has matured—particularly on the tape side—which improves cost and supply availability,” says Husam Alissa, Microsoft’s director of systems technology. “Our focus currently is on validating and derisking this technology with our partners with focus on systems design and integration.”