Nordic Semiconductor Combines Wi-Fi and Edge AI in nRF71 Chips

Nordic Semiconductor announced the nRF71 Series on November 3, 2026, describing low-power chips for battery-operated devices that combine Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE, Thread, application processing and on-device AI support, with up to 20 times lower standby power than its current nRF70 Series Wi-Fi products. The first chips are the nRF7120 and nRF7120E. Both combine Wi-Fi, a 2.4 GHz multiprotocol radio and a host processor on one device.

Nordic’s earlier nRF70 Series products were Wi-Fi companion ICs used to add low-power Wi-Fi to designs built on its Bluetooth LE SoCs. The new architecture removes the need for a separate host microcontroller and is intended to simplify designs while reducing their board space and component requirements. Nordic lists average current while connected at DTIM 10 of 14 microamps at 2.4 GHz and 8 microamps at 5 GHz for both SoCs.

Target Wake Time and Wi-Fi power save with a dedicated low-power receiver are enabled by default in nRF Connect SDK. With those features active, a device can remain on the network and consume little current between transmissions using existing infrastructure. That is the…