On November 3, 2026 Nordic Semiconductor announced the nRF71 Series, its first system-on-chip that puts Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE, Thread and an application processor on a single die. Until now Nordic's Wi-Fi parts (the nRF70 Series) were companion chips that needed a separate host MCU. Nordic says the nRF71 uses up to 20 times less power in standby than the nRF70 generation, and that number is the point of the launch: Wi-Fi devices that run for years on batteries.

Two parts, two radios

The first two chips are:

  • nRF7120 - dual-band Wi-Fi 6.
  • nRF7120E - tri-band Wi-Fi 6E plus Nordic's Axon NPU for on-device machine learning.

Both have 4 MB of on-chip non-volatile memory and 1 MB of user-accessible RAM, and run on a 256 MHz Arm Cortex-M33. Nordic claims the Axon NPU runs models 10 to 17 times faster than the Cortex-M33 alone, with keyword spotting, anomaly detection and image classification given as examples.

The radio design matters more for home automation than the NPU. The chip has two independent radios with separate RF and processing blocks: a Wi-Fi radio and the 2.4 GHz multiprotocol radio from the nRF54 Series. Both can receive at the same time, so a device can stay connected to Wi-Fi while listening for Thread or Bluetooth LE traffic, without one protocol waiting for the other.

What it is for

Nordic lists battery-powered smart home hubs, Matter bridges and Thread border routers among the target designs, along with Matter smart locks, security panels, wearables and industrial sensors. A border router or bridge today usually means a Wi-Fi chip plus a separate 802.15.4 radio, often an ESP32 paired with an nRF52 or an EFR32. A single chip that does both and idles at low power could make small, cheaper border routers and Wi-Fi locks that do not need mains power.

For makers, the relevant detail is that Nordic keeps its existing software and tools (the nRF Connect SDK), so code written for nRF54 or nRF70 should carry over more easily than a jump to another vendor.

Availability

The nRF71 is sampling with selected customers only. Nordic has not published prices or a date for general availability, so finished products are some way off. Nordic will show the chips and a Nordic-branded module at electronica 2026 in Munich (November 10-13, hall C6, booth 159).

Espressif already sells Wi-Fi 6 plus 802.15.4 chips such as the ESP32-C6, so the nRF71 is not the first single-chip option. Its pitch is standby power. Whether the 20x figure holds up in real devices will only be clear once independent measurements appear.