Aon's Resilience Quotient Cuts Through Uncertainty and Volatility to Help Businesses Move from Risk to Resilience and Growth

• New framework brings together Aon's Risk Capital and Human Capital data with public sentiment analysis from Gallup to create a portfolio view of risk
• Creates further clarity into how risks compound across four megatrends, how resilience is built and activated and where targeted actions can most effectively influence performance

DUBLIN, Jan. 16, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Aon plc (NYSE: AON), a leading global professional services firm, announced today that it is releasing insights from a new, data-driven tool to help organizations build sustainable resilience and unlock growth: Aon's Resilience Quotient.

Developed in collaboration with Gallup, Aon's Resilience Quotient responds to a critical insight: in a time of increasing populism and fragmented sources of information, quantitative data alone is not enough to make long-term decisions. Combining public sentiment on global issues with risk and people data and analytics enables greater clarity and confidence to invest and grow amidst uncertainty and volatility.

By integrating Aon's proprietary Risk Capital and Human Capital analytics with the results of Gallup's World Poll covering 140 countries for more than 20 years, the firm's Resilience Quotient captures both objective conditions and subjective sentiment, revealing where sentiment signals hidden risks and potential opportunities to achieve greater resilience. This system-level view enables leaders to spot emerging risks sooner, prioritize resilience investments and move from reactive risk management to proactive decision-making.

"When making decisions around investment, workforce or managing geopolitical risk, a portfolio view is far superior to a siloed perspective," said Greg Case, president and CEO of Aon. "Understanding sentiment can be an opportunity signal or an early warning. Leaders who are limited to only some of the relevant metrics risk missing the signals that matter most. Aon's Resilience Quotient delivers an integrated view to help organizations act decisively, strengthen resilience and unlock sustainable growth."

Four interconnected megatrends – Trade, Technology, Weather and Workforce – are reshaping the global operating environment in ways that traditional models struggle to anticipate. Aon's Resilience Quotient provides a clearer view of the tradeoffs within these interactions: how trade volatility can amplify technology risk, how climate pressures influence workforce mobility and how sentiment can either reinforce resilience or heighten operational risk, even when the fundamentals appear strong.   

To illustrate the insights from its Resilience Quotient, the firm published three case studies addressing some of the most relevant and urgent issues facing the 2026 global economy:

• Realizing the Opportunity of AI: Securing Data Center Growth
  Data centers are the backbone of the digital economy and with nearly $1.3 trillion projected to be invested globally in data centers by 2030, their rapid expansion brings unprecedented risks. Aon's Resilience Quotient shows that resilience varies sharply at the sub-national level, often more than underlying risk. Within the U.S., Iowa emerges as the most resilient destination for data center development, combining very low overall risk with exceptionally strong trade and weather resilience.

  "Aon's Resilience Quotient shows that Iowa's resilience–risk balance is roughly twice the national median, demonstrating how governance quality, institutional confidence and preparedness materially shape long-term infrastructure outcomes," said Joe Peiser, CEO of Commercial Risk Solutions at Aon. "This underscores the opportunity for leaders who understand the combined effect of low risk, resilient trade and weather systems and a strong foundation of public trust — factors that ultimately determine where AI infrastructure can grow at scale."

DUBLIN, Jan. 16, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Aon plc (NYSE: AON), a leading global professional services firm, announced today that it is releasing insights from a new, data-driven tool to help organizations build sustainable resilience and unlock growth: Aon's Resilience Quotient.

Developed in collaboration with Gallup, Aon's Resilience Quotient responds to a critical insight: in a time of increasing populism and fragmented sources of information, quantitative data alone is not enough to make long-term decisions. Combining public sentiment on global issues with risk and people data and analytics enables greater clarity and confidence to invest and grow amidst uncertainty and volatility.

By integrating Aon's proprietary Risk Capital and Human Capital analytics with the results of Gallup's World Poll covering 140 countries for more than 20 years, the firm's Resilience Quotient captures both objective conditions and subjective sentiment, revealing where sentiment signals hidden risks and potential opportunities to achieve greater resilience. This system-level view enables leaders to spot emerging risks sooner, prioritize resilience investments and move from reactive risk management to proactive decision-making.

"When making decisions around investment, workforce or managing geopolitical risk, a portfolio view is far superior to a siloed perspective," said Greg Case, president and CEO of Aon. "Understanding sentiment can be an opportunity signal or an early warning. Leaders who are limited to only some of the relevant metrics risk missing the signals that matter most. Aon's Resilience Quotient delivers an integrated view to help organizations act decisively, strengthen resilience and unlock sustainable growth."

Four interconnected megatrends – Trade, Technology, Weather and Workforce – are reshaping the global operating environment in ways that traditional models struggle to anticipate. Aon's Resilience Quotient provides a clearer view of the tradeoffs within these interactions: how trade volatility can amplify technology risk, how climate pressures influence workforce mobility and how sentiment can either reinforce resilience or heighten operational risk, even when the fundamentals appear strong.   

To illustrate the insights from its Resilience Quotient, the firm published three case studies addressing some of the most relevant and urgent issues facing the 2026 global economy:

"Aon's Resilience Quotient shows that Iowa's resilience–risk balance is roughly twice the national median, demonstrating how governance quality, institutional confidence and preparedness materially shape long-term infrastructure outcomes," said Joe Peiser, CEO of Commercial Risk Solutions at Aon. "This underscores the opportunity for leaders who understand the combined effect of low risk, resilient trade and weather systems and a strong foundation of public trust — factors that ultimately determine where AI infrastructure can grow at scale."

• Workforce Transformation: AI Adoption and the Next Generation Workforce 
  The acceleration of AI adoption is transforming the workforce, but most organizations face a critical gap between the demand for AI skills and their readiness to adapt. The Resilience Quotient highlights how workforce engagement, trust and institutional preparedness are essential to harnessing AI's potential, making resilience the key differentiator between organizations that thrive through change and those that risk falling behind.

  "Aon's Resilience Quotient equips leaders to navigate rapid AI change with confidence," said Lisa Stevens, chief administrative officer at Aon. "These insights help create the conditions for early‑career employees to build the skills and confidence they need — so instead of losing a generation of talent, we cultivate one that is more capable and resilient than ever."

"Aon's Resilience Quotient equips leaders to navigate rapid AI change with confidence," said Lisa Stevens, chief administrative officer at Aon. "These insights help create the conditions for early‑career employees to build the skills and confidence they need — so instead of losing a generation of talent, we cultivate one that is more capable and resilient than ever."

• Rethinking Humanitarian Finance: A New Approach to Forced Migration
  Over 120 million people are currently displaced by conflict, climate and systemic crises, reshaping societies and economies worldwide. Aon's Resilience Quotient highlights Venezuela and Colombia to illustrate the tradeoffs between investing resources at the source of migration — supporting those facing institutional erosion, food insecurity and economic collapse — or directing investment to more stable countries like Colombia that are absorbing people fleeing unlivable conditions.

  "Forced displacement results from extreme weather and man-made disasters like conflict and economic failure," said Bridget Gainer, chief public affairs officer at Aon. "If we could leverage the forecasting and financial capability of insurance to better predict and more quickly mitigate the impact of this volatility, we could help create conditions that allow populations to remain and rebuild in their home countries."

"Forced displacement results from extreme weather and man-made disasters like conflict and economic failure," said Bridget Gainer, chief public affairs officer at Aon. "If we could leverage the forecasting and financial capability of insurance to better predict and more quickly mitigate the impact of this volatility, we could help create conditions that allow populations to remain and rebuild in their home countries."

"Resilience is not a single blueprint, it's the way systems mitigate, adapt and transform under pressure. Aon's Resilience Quotient functions as a pressure gauge, surfacing the trade‑offs and early signals that help leaders strengthen resilience where it matters most," said Joe Daly, managing partner at Gallup. "We're proud to collaborate with Aon to combine Gallup's global sentiment analytics with Aon's Risk Capital and Human Capital data, turning confidence into actionable insight."

New insights from Aon's Resilience Quotient suggest that going forward, resilience priorities will shift from static risk management to dynamic, localized strategies. As disruptions become more complex and frequent, organizations will need to tailor resilience investments to specific geographies, sectors and even sub-regional contexts. Aon's Resilience Quotient is supported with a real-time analytics and AI-enabled insights platform, built by Quantum Rise, providing deeper visibility into evolving risk and resilience signals as conditions change.

Aon and Gallup will join global decision-makers at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting to advance these critical discussions on restoring confidence and unlocking sustainable growth.

Learn more about Aon's Resilience Quotient and explore the case studies here.

About Aon
Aon plc (NYSE: AON) exists to shape decisions for the better — to protect and enrich the lives of people around the world. Through actionable analytic insight, globally integrated Risk Capital and Human Capital expertise, and locally relevant solutions, our colleagues provide clients in over 120 countries with the clarity and confidence to make better risk and people decisions that help protect and grow their businesses.

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Aon's Resilience Quotient Cuts Through Uncertainty and Volatility to Help Businesses Move from Risk to Resilience and Growth

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.

** This press release is distributed by PR Newswire through automated distribution system, for which the client assumes full responsibility. **

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

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

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