Lexar launched a range of storage products at IFA 2026 in Berlin, led by the Muse Ultra-Slim Portable SSD, which the company said is the world’s thinnest portable SSD.
The launch marks Lexar’s 30th anniversary and comes as the company expands from consumer storage into AI storage technology and business-to-business applications, building on three decades in the memory business, the company said.
The Muse combines a card-like body with a magnetic carry sleeve and Lexar’s PogoPin magnetic data connector, and is aimed at handheld filming, travel, on-the-go editing and backup. Lexar said it named the drive Muse to reflect its role in inspiring creativity.
It has a precision-machined unibody metal enclosure formed from a single piece of metal, measuring about 3.8 mm at its thickest point and tapering to 1 mm at the edge. Inside are a custom ultra-thin circuit board and high-density NAND stacking, Lexar said.
The drive connects via the supplied SnapLink Magnetic Cable, which attaches through a spring-loaded pin interface. N52-grade neodymium magnets in the data connector and the mounting sleeve let the drive attach to the back of compatible MagSafe iPhone models, the company said.
Lexar said the Muse delivers read speeds of up to 1,050 MB/s and write speeds of up to 1,000 MB/s. It works with iPhone, iPad, Mac and other USB-C devices, and supports direct external recording of Apple ProRes 4K video at up to 120 frames per second on compatible iPhone models.
The Muse will be available in 512GB and 1TB capacities from the fourth quarter this year, the company said.
Lexar also showcased its AI Storage Core technology at the event, including concept AI-grade Gen5 SSD and Gen5 Storage Stick products with bandwidth of up to 11 GB/s. The company said these are aimed at compact AI devices that need larger local model storage, faster model switching, lower-latency data access and sustained performance under constrained power and thermal conditions.
The concepts are built around a Gen5 controller chip, which Lexar calls a Storage Processing Unit, developed by its parent company Longsys and manufactured on a 5-nanometre process with a DRAM-less architecture. Lexar said its accompanying Luma Bridge software uses intelligent workload scheduling, predictive prefetching and optimised cache management to handle large Mixture-of-Experts models and expanding KV Cache demands, reducing DRAM capacity requirements by about 40 per cent.
Lexar presented a client SSD portfolio for system builders and commercial PC customers, offering PCIe Gen3 and Gen4 options across a range of performance, capacity and cost requirements. It also showed a Dashcam USB Flash Drive Series with high-endurance firmware for electric-vehicle users, aimed at continuous loop recording as EVs increasingly add dashcam and multi-channel video capture and Sentry Mode-style features, the company said.
