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This wireless power startup says it can charge your phone using only radio waves

True wireless power transmission, without cords or charging mats, has been a white whale for the technology industry for decades. But a new startup born out of the California Institute of Technology claims it’s figured out how to pull it off in a way that is small, cheap, and efficient enough to be commercialized. Called Guru, the company has built a wireless charging system that transmits electricity using high-frequency radio waves, specifically the millimeter wave (mmWave) variety that underpins burgeoning 5G cell networks in the US.

Next week at CES, Guru is unveiling three prototype charging products it wants to develop in partnership with electronics manufacturers, but the company gave The Verge an early look at the technology and explained how it works. The three prototypes include a desk charging system that can wirelessly charge pretty much any gadget within a few feet, a room-scale version the size of a ceiling tile that has significantly more range, and a roving Roomba-like robot that’s designed to move around a large space and charge small, smart home-style gadgets like cameras and IoT sensors.

“The idea of sending power of distance is not new. Nikola Tesla had that same idea that power should be sent wirelessly,” says co-founder and CEO Florian Bohn, who previously founded a cellphone component company called Axiom Semiconductor and worked on a CalTech initiative to harness solar power and beam it to Earth using microwaves. “What makes us different is we’re using very advanced technology as well as our system design and mmWave technology that allows us to send power in a controlled and safe and effective manner.”

And Bohn’s point is an important one. Wireless power transmission, as a concept, is over a century old, and scientists have proven that it does indeed work, thanks to experiments over the last few decades that have made use of more sophisticated radio technology. For the tech industry, over-the-air wireless charging for consumer gadgets has been kicking around for some time, too.

A number of startups tried and failed to get the idea off the ground, most notably New York-based uBeam, a troubled startup that’s been trying to use ultrasonic waves for wireless power transmission and repeatedly missed its deadlines for delivering a working product. Apple also recently filed a patent for this exact technology, and a number of other startups have either come to CES in years past or are planning to come to this year’s show to prove they have a working version of the idea.

But why should we take Guru seriously? According to Bohn, the company has two advantages. One is that it’s using mmWave, which are extremely high-frequency radio waves that allow for high precision. That way, Guru’s charger can identify the device that needs charging and send a localized beam of radio waves that transmit electricity, in a way that’s vastly superior to lower-frequency waves.

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