Long-range wireless charging company shares almost double today following rumors of partnering with Apple for years

Shares of Energous, a company developing long-range RF charging technology under the name “WattUp,” nearly doubled today, apparently under the spur of a Bloomberg report this morning indicating that Apple has been working on a MagSafe battery for its iPhone 12 line. The story started earlier this week when MacRumors Contributor Steve Moser discovered a non-specific reference to an iPhone “battery” in the latest beta of iOS 14.5.

According to a report this morning from CNA Finances, investors are betting on new rumors that Energous and Apple are working together on wireless charging, based on a “previously overlooked SEC filing.” The report has been taken up by several financial reporting bodies, in particular The street and Seeking Alpha.

Aside from the fact that Apple’s MagSafe inductive wireless charging relies on a different technology than the RF system developed by Energous, there is another problem with today’s rumor, and that is that the Apparent filings in question that mention “Apple’s compliance testing” for WattUp technology were filed in 2013 and 2014 and were widely covered in the media in 2016. The last time an Energous SEC filing mentioned Apple dates back to December 2014.

There was a surge of interest in Energous in 2016 and 2017 amid rumors of a partnership with Apple, but that speculation quickly subsided and things have remained essentially silent for several years now. Energous has continued to develop its long-range charging technology, working with Dialog Semiconductor on both transmitter and receiver hardware, but so far only deploying it in a few niche applications such as equine health monitoring.