Nordic Semiconductor has launched a new wireless system-on-chip (SoC) designed to bring Wi-Fi and edge AI to battery-powered IoT devices, claiming up to 20 times lower standby power consumption than its previous-generation Wi-Fi products.
The nRF71 Series combines Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy (LE), Thread and on-device AI on a single chip, targeting applications in smart homes, wearables and industrial IoT where devices need to remain connected while operating for years on battery power.
The launch addresses a longstanding challenge for battery-powered connected devices: balancing the power demands of Wi-Fi connectivity with the processing requirements of increasingly sophisticated applications, including AI inference.
Nordic said the new series builds on the low-power architecture, software and development tools used in its existing Bluetooth LE products. The company claims the devices achieve up to 20 times lower standby power consumption than its current-generation nRF70 Series Wi-Fi products.
The integration of AI processing is another key feature. The nRF71 Series incorporates an Axon neural processing unit (NPU), allowing machine learning inference to run directly on the chip without requiring a separate AI processor.
According to Nordic, the NPU can execute machine learning models between 10 and 17 times faster than the chip’s 256MHz Arm Cortex-M33 processor alone. Potential applications include keyword spotting, anomaly detection and image classification.
Developers can also use Nordic’s Neuton software to build and deploy smaller machine learning models using their own data, with inference running on the processor without relying on the NPU. Over-the-air model updates are supported through Nordic’s nRF Cloud platform.
The company is positioning the technology for applications including Matter-enabled smart locks, security panels, smart home hubs, Matter bridges, Thread border routers and industrial sensors.
The chip includes two independent radios, with separate RF and processing blocks. One supports Wi-Fi, while the other uses the 2.4GHz multiprotocol radio architecture found in Nordic’s latest nRF54 Series. Both radios can receive simultaneously, allowing devices to maintain a Wi-Fi connection while listening for Bluetooth LE or Thread communications.
This could simplify designs that need to support multiple wireless protocols without compromising connectivity or requiring additional components.
The first devices in the series are the nRF7120, which supports dual-band Wi-Fi 6, and the nRF7120E, which adds tri-band Wi-Fi 6E. Both include 4MB of on-chip non-volatile memory and 1MB of user-accessible RAM, while the nRF7120E also incorporates the Axon NPU for hardware-accelerated edge AI.
Nordic said the nRF71 Series is now sampling with selected customers. The company will demonstrate the technology, including a Nordic-branded module, at Electronica 2026 in Munich, Hall C6, booth 159.
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