Nordic Semiconductor unveils nRF71 chips combining Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Thread and edge AI

Norwegian low-power wireless chipmaker Nordic Semiconductor announced the nRF71 Series of ultra-low-power systems-on-chip (SoCs) on November 3, combining Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy (LE), Thread and edge AI on a single chip aimed at smart-home and industrial IoT devices that must run for years on a battery. The company says the new series delivers up to 20 times lower standby power than its current nRF70 Series Wi-Fi products. (Photo: file image of a Nordic chip product, not the newly announced nRF71.)

Two launch models, with a neural processor on the higher-end part

The first two models are the nRF7120 and nRF7120E. The nRF7120 supports dual-band Wi-Fi 6, while the nRF7120E adds the 6 GHz band for tri-band Wi-Fi 6E and integrates the Axon neural processing unit (NPU) for hardware-accelerated edge AI. Both use a 256 MHz Arm Cortex-M33 application processor plus an additional 256 MHz RISC-V coprocessor for real-time tasks. Nordic says the Axon NPU runs machine-learning models 10 to 17 times faster than the Cortex-M33 alone, making keyword spotting, anomaly detection and image classification practical on battery-powered devices.

Built for battery-powered devices, now sampling with selected customers

Nordic says the nRF71 Series suits smart-home hubs, Matter bridges and Thread border routers, as well as Matter-enabled smart locks, security panels, wearables and industrial sensors that previously could not easily use Wi-Fi on battery power. The company will showcase the series at the Electronica trade fair in Munich (Hall C6, booth 159) and is now sampling with selected customers; developers can contact their local Nordic sales representative about availability. FCC, CE and Japan certifications for the module version have not yet been completed.

Sources: Nordic Semiconductor official press release (November 3, 2026, via PR Newswire).