The state already hosts more than 500 data centers.

On Monday, Apple briefly removed the popular messaging app Telegram from the App Store for iOS devices after a report that a user was sharing illegal content. According to both Apple and Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, the app — which has more than 1 billion users — was restored on the App Store within hours. But Durov accused Apple of overreacting to a ransom attempt in a group chat.

In a Telegram post about the incident, Durov said a member of a public group chat edited a previously posted message and added what Durov called “AI-modified illegal content” to it in an attempt to get the group chat flagged, because its admins had presumably refused to pay a ransom. Instead, Apple removed the app from the Apple App Store entirely until the user was banned. Apple confirmed in an email to CNET that Telegram remained available in the separate Mac App Store and that users who already had Telegram downloaded were not affected.

“We briefly removed Telegram from the App Store after our review found content that violates our strict guidelines prohibiting child sexual abuse material,” Apple said in a statement. “The app was subsequently restored after the developer promptly removed the content and banned the user who posted it.”

Apple did not immediately respond to questions about why the Mac version of Telegram remained available for download while the mobile version was removed.

A representative for Telegram declined to comment directly, instead pointing to Durov’s post.

Telegram warns other app developers

Durov said that the extortionist manipulated Apple into an “overreaction” that led to the app’s removal, which he said occurred without warning. That could happen, he said, to other apps that include user content.

“If an app used by more than a billion people can be removed from the App Store without prior warning, any app can be,” Durov wrote.

Telegram’s official X account more pointedly criticized Apple’s actions in a series of posts and replies. In one, Telegram posted, “reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated,” followed by an apple emoji. In another that included a link to Durov’s post, Telegram wrote, “I’m sure this stance will be applied equally to all other apps in the store, in the future, right? @Apple.”

AI + ML

The House of Zen’s new Helios racks, Venice Epycs, may dent Nvidia’s dominance — if the bubble doesn’t pop first

AMD has posted strong second quarter results and forecast even better future financials once its Helios rack systems and Instinct MI400-series GPUs reach buyers.

“In data center AI, the growing number and scale of Helios and MI450-series deployments position the [datacenter] business for significant growth in the second half of the year, with growth accelerating in 2027,” CEO Lisa Su told investors on Tuesday during the chip design company’s Q2 earnings call. “We now expect data center segment revenue to more than double year over year in 2027,” she added.

Yet, despite reporting Q2 profits surging 163 percent year-over-year on revenues of $11.5 billion, and several multi-gigawatts worth of Helios commitments from the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta in the bag, Wall Street isn’t buying it.

The company’s share plunged 10.5 percent after its results announcement, before settling 8.7 percent below opening price at the time of publication.

The apparent cause for concern: AMD’s growing exposure to the AI bubble. Much of the company’s growth potential across both CPUs and GPUs is tied to AI adoption by a handful of companies that are yet to prove they can operate profitably.

On Tuesday’s earnings call, Su attempted to assuage investor fears, but in the same breath she said the quiet part out loud. 

“When we talked about the large frontier-model companies, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, they will be consuming through a number of CSPs,” Su said. “There are additional customers or lots of customers who are interested in Helios at, let’s call it, a more regular scale than gigawatt scale.”

In other words, while AMD can sell plenty of GPUs, most are sold to a handful of customers. And while other entities have AMD on their shopping lists, they don’t buy in bulk.

Microsoft, another flagship customer for AMD’s latest generation of AI picks and shoves, serves both OpenAI and Anthropic, while Meta is reportedly looking to enter the GPU cloud biz itself.

Despite this, AMD remains optimistic about its prospects over the next few quarters.

It’s not hard to see why because since the launch of its MI300-series GPUs in late 2023, AMD has established itself as the most credible alternative to Nvidia.

At its Advancing AI event in San Francisco last month, the company showcased a new rack-scale compute platform called Helios packing 72 Instinct MI455X GPUs each with 432 GB of HBM4 memory on board.

On paper, the system meets or beats the performance of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform on most metrics. The Reg explored these chips in greater detail here.

AMD is also eager to cash in on demand for CPUs to power agentic AI sandboxes, which Su anticipates will be the biggest growth driver for Epyc sales before long.

Also unveiled at Advancing AI, AMD’s Venice Epycs will offer up to 256 cores and 512 threads with support for 16 memory channels at speeds of up to 1.6 TB/s per socket.

However, the CPU market isn’t the duopoly it once was and AMD now faces its traditional foe Intel, plus new competitors such as Nvidia, Arm, Qualcomm, AWS, Google, and Microsoft.

Nonetheless Su remains bullish about AMD’s prospects.

“Whether it’s server CPU, datacenter, AI, or our embedded business, and our PC business, we see them all benefiting from the AI tailwinds,” Su said.

It seems the AI tides will lift all chips, but let’s not forget that tides rise and fall. 

In any case, while AMD’s embedded division is doing quite well with revenues topping $977 million, an increase of 19 percent over this time last year, things aren’t looking so hot for the House of Zen’s gaming and client computing divisions. While client PC sales were up 23 percent YoY to $3.1 billion during the quarter, AMD warns that the ongoing RAMpocalypse is likely to cut into PC sales over the next few quarters.

Meanwhile in gaming, the end of a console sales cycle is hitting AMD hard on semi-custom processor orders, with gaming revenue down 31 percent during the quarter to $779 million

AMD’s datacenter and AI sales teams therefore get the job of delivering the company’s Q3 forecast which calls for revenues of $13 billion plus or minus $300 million. ®

OpenAI and Anthropic have confirmed that their AI models were involved in separate, newly disclosed third-party cybersecurity testing incidents that resulted in a real website being breached and social engineering attacks against people outside the intended testing boundaries.

These incidents are unrelated to the previously disclosed Hugging Face breach, in which OpenAI models hacked the AI platform and used exposed credentials to breach accounts at four other third-party services during another cybersecurity evaluation.

OpenAI disclosed the two new incidents on Tuesday, saying they occurred during evaluations conducted by the UK AI Security Institute and cybersecurity testing company Irregular.

Spear-phishing attacks on GitHub project maintainers

The UK AI Security Institute, commonly known as AISI, is a government research organization that evaluates the capabilities and risks of advanced AI models.

During a recent cyber-range evaluation, AISI says agents powered by Anthropic’s Claude Mythos 5 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol took unsanctioned actions on the public internet while trying to complete simulated hacking challenges.

Across 122 evaluation attempts, AISI identified 19 unsanctioned actions on the live internet in 10 runs. Seventeen involved Mythos 5 and two involved GPT-5.6 Sol.

AISI says the attempts were unsuccessful and that it found no resulting real-world harm.

“These attempts were unsuccessful, and our investigations have not evidenced any resulting real-world harm,” AISI said in a separate advisory.

“But this is the first time we have seen risks around autonomy and deception manifest this clearly, without specific prompting, in the real-world.  “

AISI intentionally enabled open internet access and disabled the model providers’ cyber classifiers to measure the models’ underlying capabilities. However, the agents were only authorized to attack the simulated cyber range and were not explicitly told how they could use their internet access or instructed to avoid interacting with real people and systems.

Anthropic confirmed to BleepingComputer that AISI was testing a version of Claude Mythos 5 but said it is still investigating and cannot yet confirm all of the technical details described in AISI’s report.

The company said it was notified on Monday and is working with AISI to obtain the evaluation transcripts needed to conduct its own review.

“We’re grateful to the UK AISI for their leadership on this incident, which underscores the need for a broader conversation about how to safely evaluate increasingly capable AI agents,” an Anthropic spokesperson told BleepingComputer.

“As we shared after disclosing our own incident last week, the field needs stronger, shared standards for how evaluation environments are built and secured. We look forward to partnering with the UK AISI to learn more about this incident as we conduct our own investigation.”

Anthropic noted that AISI tested Mythos 5 without its standard cyber safeguards enabled and that this is not the same configuration available to customers. AISI says its evaluation design and configurations may have contributed to the behavior, but did not anticipate how the agent would show “signs of novel, potentially deceptive behaviours”.

AISI says a Mythos 5 agent searched the internet for terms related to the cyber challenge and mistakenly concluded that an unrelated public GitHub repository was connected to the test.

The agent then attempted a supply-chain attack by submitting malicious code to the real open-source project, believing that compromising the software could provide a path into a machine within the simulated range.

Most concerning, the agent researched the project’s maintainers, created multiple fake GitHub identities, and used those accounts in social engineering attacks to push the maintainer into approving a malicious pull request.

When a human reviewer warned that the pull request contained malware, the agent denied the accusation and used other fake accounts it controlled to pressure the maintainer and create the appearance that independent users had reviewed and approved the changes.

The agent continued its social engineering attacks by hiding its identity using Tor and proxy services and creating disposable GitHub accounts.

It sent five targeted emails to the developers, with some containing malware and others attempting to persuade them to approve the code change.

The agent also posted bug reports containing malicious code and hidden prompt-injection instructions designed to trick AI coding assistants into taking unintended actions.

When a real person questioned one of the posts, the agent edited it to conceal the malicious content. In another attempt, it signed off in Danish to appear more convincing to a Danish-speaking maintainer.

AISI researchers found that agents coordinated with each other across different evaluation runs, using a shared GitHub repository as a message board to leave instructions for one another.

“This is the first time AISI has seen deception of this severity that was targeted at a real person, unprompted, in the real world,” the institute said.

AISI says it remains unclear when, or whether, the model understood that it was interacting with real people rather than simulated targets.

OpenAI model hacked real website during simulated CTF

The second newly disclosed incident occurred during Capture-the-Flag evaluations conducted by Irregular that were supposed to be isolated from the internet.

In one test, the fictional target’s name happened to match a real domain, causing the model to exploit a real website that it believed was part of the simulated challenge.

While Irregular’s testing environment was supposed to be isolated from the internet, a misconfiguration allowed OpenAI models to access the public internet and target the real website.

“Based on Irregular’s investigation, the model also found and used credentials to operate that same site,” OpenAI said.

OpenAI says the model exploited a basic vulnerability rather than using a zero-day or escaping its testing environment.

OpenAI says Irregular has not discovered any impact beyond the affected site’s own data, but its investigation remains ongoing. OpenAI says the company is preparing a white paper on containment and securely conducting cyber evaluations.

Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.

The Picus whitepaper shows how breach and attack simulation tests your SIEM and EDR rules so threats stop slipping by detection.

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Presented by Rezolve Ai

Most brands know something is shifting in how consumers find and choose products. What most don’t know is how much of that shift has already taken place, where it’s happening, or whether they’re on the right side of it. That uncertainty is the problem. And the analytics stack most brands rely on isn’t built to resolve it.

The decision layer has moved

In 2014, 82% of digital commerce started on a brand’s website. By 2024 that had fallen to 38%, according to Salesforce research. The journey that used to begin at a brand’s front door now begins somewhere else. Increasingly, it begins with a question asked of an AI platform and ends with an answer that shapes the purchase decision before any brand-owned touchpoint is engaged.

Consumers are asking AI where to shop, what to buy, and which product is right for them. Bain research shows that four in five consumers rely on zero-click results at least 40% of the time. That means the shortlist a consumer receives from an AI answer engine is, in many cases, the only shortlist they consult. Adobe Analytics recorded over 800% year-over-year growth in AI-driven traffic to retail sites, a signal of how rapidly AI platforms are inserting themselves between brands and their customers.

This is a structural shift, not a trend. And it has created a category of commercial loss that most analytics tools are architecturally incapable of detecting.

What you can’t see is costing you

The gap is this: a brand can have strong onsite conversion metrics and still be losing significant ground in the market, because the customers who never arrived aren’t captured in any dashboard. There’s no “AI excluded you” event in a session log. There’s no abandoned cart entry for a shopper who was told by an AI assistant that a competitor was the better fit.

This is different from the SEO problem brands have managed for two decades. With traditional search, absence had a visible signal. You could see your ranking, audit the gap, and act on it. With AI answer engines, absence is invisible by default. The surface doesn’t show you what it didn’t show the consumer.

Sixty percent of searches now end without a click, according to Semrush’s 2025 zero-click study. For AI-mediated discovery, that number is structurally higher. The answer is the destination. If a brand isn’t in the answer, it isn’t in the consideration set, and its analytics will never surface that fact.

The metric that isn’t being measured

The commerce industry has developed sophisticated instrumentation for the journey from landing page to purchase. It has essentially no instrumentation for the journey from consumer intent to brand discovery, the layer where AI is now operating.

Brands that want to understand their actual competitive position in an AI-mediated market need to ask a different set of questions: How does my brand appear when consumers ask AI for recommendations in my category? What language does AI use to describe my products? Where am I present, where am I absent, and where am I being described in ways that don’t reflect my positioning?

These aren’t marketing questions. They’re infrastructure questions. And answering them requires a different kind of audit than anything in the current commerce or marketing toolkit.

Rezolve Ai commissioned research across 1,500 US consumers in January 2025 that found the majority of shoppers who use AI for product research make purchase decisions directly from those AI-generated recommendations, without returning to a search engine or brand site to verify. The implication for brands is significant: by the time a consumer reaches a brand’s owned properties, the decision may already have been made, or unmade, somewhere else.

What comes next

The brands that will maintain commercial relevance as AI mediates more of the discovery layer are those that develop visibility into it, not just presence on their own platforms. That means treating AI discoverability as a measurable discipline, not an assumption, and building the infrastructure to understand, track, and influence how AI systems represent them to consumers.

The tools to do that are emerging. The measurement frameworks are not yet standardized. But the brands that begin building that visibility now will have a structural advantage as the market continues to shift.

AI answer engines are already forming preferences. Every day without visibility is a day those preferences solidify without you.

Sponsored articles are content produced by a company that is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. For more information, contact sales@venturebeat.com.

Visa’s Andrew Torre claimed the acquisition will enable the organisation to better identify fraud before it impacts consumers at the point of payment.

Payment platform Visa has stated it plans to acquire Israel-based cybersecurity company BioCatch as a means of tackling cybersecurity breaches and AI-powered attacks. 

Andrew Torre, the president of value-added services at Visa, said the $2.4bn cash acquisition will enable Visa’s clients to stop fraudulent activity before it reaches a point of payment. 

Established in Tel Aviv in 2011 by Avi Turgemen, Benny Rosenbaum and Uri Rivner, BioCatch aims to detect fraud and differentiate legitimate users from fraudulent users in real time by analysing signals. The organisation has offices in Tel Aviv, London, New York, São Paulo, Mexico City, Mumbai and Sydney.

As part of the acquisition, Visa will gain access to BioCatch’s behavioural biometrics platform, which can analyse identifying data such as keystroke timing, touch screen pressure and other signals used to distinguish real users from scammers and bots. 

In a press release, BioCatch’s CEO Gadi Mazor said: “Real-time insights into customer intent continue to grow increasingly essential for institutions to establish trust within digital banking sessions. For more than a decade, we’ve demonstrated behaviour’s unique ability to distinguish the criminal from the legitimate. 

“In the last couple of years, we’ve shown how real-time intelligence-sharing networks between our customers can amplify the power of our behavioural intelligence further still. Together with Visa, we’re even better positioned to advance our mission of making the world a safer place to transact and protect consumers from financial crime.”

Visa’s deal will be subject to the traditional closing conditions, including receipt of applicable regulatory approvals and is expected to close by the end of Visa’s fiscal second quarter of 2027.

AI-powered cyberattacks are becoming an increasingly concerning issue for organisations. In late July, chipmaker Nvidia formed an alliance with other companies in the technology space, in order to develop and share tools designed for enhanced AI safety and cybersecurity. 

The Open Secure AI Alliance’s founding members include Adobe, Crowdstrike, Hugging Face and Dell Technologies, among others. 

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Big anniversary, big screens? Apple might bump up the display size of the iPhone Pro and iPhone Pro Max next year as the company celebrates the 20th anniversary of the iPhone, according to an insider.

Digital Chat Station, an anonymous but well-regarded source of tech leaks, shared on Chinese social media platform Weibo that the iPhone 20 Pro could feature a 6.4-inch display, while the iPhone 20 Pro Max could come with a 7-inch screen. Although the account holder’s identity has never been publicly confirmed, Digital Chat Station has built a reputation for providing reliable information about upcoming devices.

Apple is expected to release those devices in September 2027, three months after the company celebrates the 20th anniversary of the iPhone’s launch on June 29, 2007. (For a blast from the past, check out CNET’s review of that legendary device.) Apple has not announced any official launch dates.

A representative for Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The latest versions of the iPhone Pro and Pro Max are a tad smaller — 6.3 inches for the iPhone Pro and 6.9 inches for the iPhone Pro Max.

The iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, expected to launch next month, will also have 6.3- and 6.9-inch screen sizes. According to our roundup of reports and rumors about Apple’s upcoming products, the company’s next lineup could also include its first foldable iPhone, the Apple Watch Series 12, and the Apple Watch Ultra 4

Glass all around?

In addition to the larger screen sizes for the iPhone 20 Pro and Pro Max, the Digital Chat Station report also said the devices might have a quad-curved design and no bezel showing. If true, when you look at the front of those phones, you’ll only see glass that wraps around all four edges. You won’t see a bezel, the border that surrounds the screen, which is typically found on most smartphones.

Digital Chat Station said that, even with the bigger screens, the phones will maintain the same aspect ratio.

The last time Apple increased screen size was two years ago. The iPhone 16 Pro screen size increased to 6.3 inches (up from 6.1), and the Pro Max to 6.9 inches (up from 6.7).

Increasing screen sizes “makes sense” as people consume more content on their iPhones, says Austin Evans, who has been testing tech devices for years on his YouTube channel, which has nearly 6 million subscribers. He also likes the idea of the wraparound glass look on the front display.

“I’m excited to see what they put together for the 20th anniversary,” Evans said. “If they’re able to ship an iPhone with effectively zero bezels at all, it could really set the tone for what an iPhone can be for the next decade.”

What else have we heard?

According to the rumor mill, there could be several other upgrades and changes for the iPhone 20 lineup.

There might not be physical buttons for powering on, adjusting volume or controlling the camera. Instead, solid-state buttons might be integrated into the frame itself, enabling consumers to initiate actions by pressing lightly or firmly.

There might be a Face ID sensor under the main screen, according to some reports. The Dynamic Island might shrink, with the front camera reduced to pinhole size, although these changes might arrive sooner with the iPhone 18.

The iPhone 20 might also have a brighter, thinner OLED panel to reduce glare, increase brightness and use less power.

Internally, the iPhone 20 might be fitted with a second-generation 2nm chip for better efficiency and performance, as well as a pure-silicon anode battery.

Ever since being admittedly fascinated by the Cambridge coffee webcam from the 1990s, I’ve written about VPNs, the NFL, smartphones, living wages, over/unders and everything in between.

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Astell&Kern has taken a flagship digital audio player with four vacuum tubes, 54 possible sound configurations and enough mass to make the word “portable” feel legally optimistic, and decided that the missing ingredient was a copper chassis. The question is whether the new material offers any meaningful performance benefit or merely gives collectors another expensive object to polish.

The new Astell&Kern SP4000T Copper expands the recently introduced SP4000T line with a chassis made from copper rather than the stainless steel used for the original silver version.

Pricing and general availability have not been announced, and Astell&Kern has not explained the delay. The timing is worth watching, however. FiiO has already increased prices in response to sharply rising memory costs, while Shanling has warned that AI driven demand and higher component prices will affect both upcoming products and new production runs.

With 256GB of internal storage and no immunity from the same semiconductor supply chain, Astell&Kern may still be calculating the final price or adjusting its production schedule before making a commitment. That remains speculation until the company says otherwise, but the SP4000T Copper is entering a very different cost environment than the one in which the original player was developed.

Related Reviews:

What Is Actually New?

The SP4000T Copper is not a second generation player or a substantially revised platform. Its internal architecture, amplification system, operating system and playback capabilities appear to be unchanged from the silver SP4000T announced ahead of High End Vienna in June 2026.

The original player is already something of an engineering fever dream. It is the first portable digital audio player to use four Raytheon JAN6418 MIL Spec vacuum tubes in a channel separated Quad configuration. Each tube is measured and paired before being mounted on its own modular circuit board.

Listeners can select Triode, Ultra Linear or Pentode tube operation, then combine those settings with OP AMP, TUBE AMP or five Hybrid amplification levels. Three adjustable tube current settings bring the total to as many as 54 possible combinations.

That is either an impressive degree of control or enough menu options to make one forget that the original purpose was listening to music.

Astell&Kern also employs a second generation, five stage anti microphonic system intended to reduce noise caused by movement and external vibration. That matters with subminiature tubes such as the JAN6418, which can become microphonic when used inside something that gets carried around, placed on a desk or dropped into a bag beside three charging cables and a set of keys.

Our hands on experience at CanJam London found the SP4000T powerful, responsive and far more commanding than its portable dimensions might suggest. It also weighs 565 grams, so slipping it into a trouser pocket remains a bold lifestyle choice.

The SP4000 Platform With Four Tubes Added

The digital section combines two AKM AK4191EQ delta sigma modulators with two AK4499EX DACs in a fully separated architecture. The design keeps the digital processing and analog conversion stages apart, while the left and right channels receive their own dedicated signal paths.

Astell&Kern also includes its High Driving Mode, TERATON ALPHA power and noise management system, ESA signal alignment, Advanced DAR upsampling and Any Layer HDI circuit boards. Native playback extends to 32 bit/768kHz PCM and DSD512.

Balanced output reaches a claimed 8Vrms, while the 3.5mm single ended output delivers up to 4.2Vrms. Those figures should provide adequate power for most IEMs and a wide range of full size headphones, although difficult planar magnetic models may still be better served by a dedicated desktop amplifier.

Android 15 provides access to current streaming applications, while Astell&Kern’s ADP technology bypasses Android’s normal sample rate conversion to preserve bit perfect playback. The SP4000T is also the company’s first player to use dual Wi-Fi antennas, which Astell&Kern claims can produce approximately twice the 5GHz download performance of its previous design.

Other features include 256GB of internal storage, microSD expansion up to 1.5TB, a six inch 2160×1080 touchscreen, Bluetooth 5.2, aptX HD, LDAC, LHDC, BT Sink, USB DAC operation, ReplayGain, Crossfeed, AK File Drop and USB PD 3.0 charging. The internal 7,450mAh battery is rated for approximately 10 hours of playback, with a full charge requiring around five hours.

Does a Copper Chassis Really Matter?

Copper is substantially more electrically conductive than stainless steel. In a properly designed enclosure, that can make it an effective material for electromagnetic shielding and potentially improve heat distribution. But material conductivity alone does not guarantee better sound. Shielding performance also depends on chassis construction, panel seams, grounding, internal layout and how the enclosure is electrically connected to the circuits inside.

There is also an awkward detail for anyone preparing to claim that the copper exterior transforms the SP4000T: the regular stainless steel model already uses a 99.9 percent pure copper Shield Can around its sensitive audio circuitry. That internal component is specifically intended to block electromagnetic interference and reduce noise before the exterior chassis enters the discussion.

A full copper enclosure may provide another layer of shielding, but Astell&Kern has not published comparative noise measurements, distortion figures or listening test data showing that the Copper version performs differently from the stainless steel model.

The company has made similar claims for previous copper editions, including the SP4000 Copper, describing the material as beneficial for conductivity, shielding and signal integrity. It also applies a multilayer coating to limit oxidation and preserve the appearance of the copper surface. Those are technically plausible benefits, but they remain manufacturer claims unless supported by direct measurements between otherwise identical models.

In other words, the SP4000T Copper is not automatically snake oil. Copper is a legitimate engineering material, and this is more substantial than changing the paint color and inventing a paragraph about “earthy musicality.”

But without comparative test results, it is difficult to argue that the copper chassis will produce a meaningful audible improvement. The most obvious changes are appearance, exclusivity and possibly weight. The copper version is therefore best understood as a luxury material option with a technically defensible backstory, not a confirmed sonic upgrade.

If the price premium is modest, buyers may reasonably choose it for the appearance and added collectibility. If Astell&Kern adds several hundred dollars because copper apparently requires its own security detail, then customers will mostly be paying for jewelry that happens to play DSD512.

Key Specifications

• DACs: Dual AKM AK4499EX
• Digital processors: Dual AKM AK4191EQ
• Vacuum tubes: Four Raytheon JAN6418 MIL Spec tubes
• Amplification: OP AMP, Tube and five stage Hybrid modes
• Tube operation: Triode, Ultra Linear and Pentode
• Maximum configurations: 54
• Maximum playback: 32 bit/768kHz PCM and DSD512
• Display: Six inch, 2160 x 1080 touchscreen
• Operating system: Android 15
• Internal storage: 256GB
• Expansion: microSD cards up to 1.5TB
• Balanced output: 4.4mm, up to 8Vrms
• Single ended output: 3.5mm, up to 4.2Vrms
• Wireless: Dual band Wi Fi, Bluetooth 5.2
• Bluetooth codecs: aptX HD, LDAC, LHDC, AAC and SBC
• Battery: 7,450mAh
• Rated playback: Approximately 10 hours
• Standard model dimensions: 85.7 x 150 x 19.5mm
• Standard model weight: 565 grams

The Bottom Line

The Astell&Kern SP4000T was already one of the most elaborate portable players on the market, combining four vacuum tubes, multiple amplification modes, flagship AKM conversion and enough output power to challenge some desktop systems.

The Copper edition does not appear to change any of that. It wraps the existing platform in a more conductive, more visually distinctive and almost certainly more expensive enclosure.

Could the copper chassis provide incremental shielding or thermal benefits? Yes.

Has Astell&Kern demonstrated that it sounds better? Not yet.

For existing SP4000T owners, this is not an upgrade. For buyers who were already considering the player and prefer copper, it is a legitimate material choice. For collectors, it will probably be irresistible because Astell&Kern understands that the shortest route to an audiophile’s wallet sometimes involves a periodic table.

Price & Availability

Astell&Kern has not announced final Copper edition pricing. Its global product page currently lists the standard SP4000T at $3,300, while several U.S. dealers list the silver model at $3,620. That makes it reasonable to expect the copper version to land above $3,500, although any exact figure would be speculation until Astell&Kern confirms it.

August 2026 Demonstrations

Astell&Kern says the SP4000T Copper will be available for demonstration at several upcoming audio events in China and the United States.

The August calendar includes the Hong Kong High End Audio Visual Show, running August 7-9 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, followed by SIAS Shenzhen from August 14-16 at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center.

The major U.S. portable audio event later in the month is CanJam SoCal, scheduled for August 29 and 30 at the Irvine Marriott in California.

Related Reading:

Dell’s MS700, priced at $19.98 (was $40), starts life looking like any other small Bluetooth mouse, then does something few others manage. Half the body rotates a full 180 degrees around a solid central hinge. One firm twist and the arched shape collapses into a nearly flat slab that slides into a laptop sleeve, jacket pocket, or the narrowest gap in a travel bag. The same motion powers the mouse on and off, so there is never a separate switch to hunt for or forget.

The MS700 is absurdly lightweight when placed in a filled bag, weighing 56.9 grams without batteries and closer to 76 grams with batteries. When opened, it measures 4.6 x 2.3 x 1.2 inches and takes up just enough room. When you twist it close, it shrinks dramatically, almost disappearing among the cords and chargers that seem to be everywhere. A magnetic battery cover, you know the type, keeps those two AAA cells secure and in place when you twist it close. Dell claims that the cells will last you 24 months with average use, or at least long enough to avoid scrambling for the charger every week or so.

Sale

Dell Wireless Gaming Mouse MS700, 4000 DPI, 2 Buttons

• Effortless portability: Weighing only 56.9g, this slim and lightweight travel mouse is your perfect companion. Its smooth, twistable design allows for…
• Perform like never before: Enjoy swift touch-scrolling for seamless navigation. The adjustable 4000 DPI ensures heightened sensitivity and precision…
• Enhanced sensitivity: Responsive and fast touch scrolling and quiet click buttons.

Bluetooth 5.0 handles the connection; simply pair the mouse with your laptop, tablet, or phone, then press a tiny button on the underside to cycle through the three devices on the list. There is no need for an annoying USB receiver to take up a valuable port, and it pairs seamlessly on Windows, macOS, ChromeOS, Linux, Android, and the most recent iOS. For the average home user, this means you can just pick up one mouse from your work laptop and use it on your living room tablet without having to re-pair each time, which we believe is a significant benefit. At the end of the day, twist it shut once more and place it in a drawer or your luggage; power is already taken care of.

The MS700’s optical sensor has a DPI of 4,000 and can be modified to 1,000, 1,600, or 2,400 using Dell’s free Peripheral Manager program for Windows. The default is 1,600, which is about as good a middle ground as you can get for daily commutes. Its left and right buttons are decent and silent when pressed. Scrolling occurs thanks to a capacitive strip running along the top, and you don’t need a huge wheel to move the page around; a gentle touch is all your fingers need to slide the pointer over. The design is enough for use with either hand if necessary, and the soft outside feel isn’t too uncomfortable even if you’re using it for an extended period of time at a wobbly coffee shop table or hotel desk.