Z-Wave Gets a Major Boost as Trident IoT Launches to Provide Alternative Silicon

The arrival of a new player in the smart home silicon market offers a powerful reminder that the universal Matter standard is not going to instantly wipe out pre-existing wireless protocols. Trident IoT has officially launched as a new company dedicated to designing and supporting Z-Wave chips, marking a critical turning point for a protocol that has spent decades relying on a single silicon provider. Founded in April, Trident IoT made its public debut with the announcement that it is roughly a month away from taping out its first chips, with plans to begin sampling them to commercial customers before the end of the year.

This development represents monumental news for the broader smart home ecosystem and the Z-Wave standard in particular. For decades, industry observers and hardware developers discussing the Z-Wave mesh network have shared a familiar refrain: they praised the technology for its robust reliability while expressing lingering frustration that a single company controlled the supply of silicon. Historically, this exclusive source—starting with Zensys—created an underlying sense of vulnerability for device manufacturers and consumers alike. The industry wanted a viable secondary source for chips to keep market pricing competitive and to serve as a crucial safety net in the unlikely event that the primary supplier ceased operations.

The history of attempts to diversify the Z-Wave silicon market has been a long and winding road. In 2008, Zensys was acquired by Sigma Designs, which briefly raised industry hopes that another silicon provider might emerge or that the proprietary radio protocol would finally be opened up to the wider market. Unfortunately, Sigma Designs kept the protocol tightly controlled. A decade later, in 2018, Silicon Labs acquired Sigma Designs, sparking a renewed wave of optimism among Z-Wave manufacturers and developers.

That optimism eventually materialized into structural changes. In 2020, Silicon Labs initiated the process of opening up the standard by spinning out the independent Z-Wave Alliance. By 2022, the Z-Wave Alliance formally announced that the complete source code had been made available for anyone to use, and that the underlying technology had successfully been ported to a new chip architecture.

Despite these progressive steps, the broader smart home landscape evolved significantly during the intervening years. Consumer interest surged, but public discourse quickly shifted away from specific radio standards like Z-Wave or ZigBee and focused instead on interoperability between major vendor ecosystems. Average consumers stopped worrying about the underlying mesh network technology and instead tried to determine whether a smart sensor would seamlessly integrate with Google Nest or Amazon Alexa.

Meanwhile, professional security companies continued to rely heavily on Z-Wave for their proprietary security and access control systems, and dedicated DIY enthusiasts eagerly purchased smart home hubs equipped with Z-Wave radios. However, after the tech industry giants officially threw their collective weight behind the Matter standard—which relies primarily on Wi-Fi and Thread—many market analysts began to assume that legacy standards like Z-Wave would inevitably fade into obsolescence.

Yet, Z-Wave is proving that it is not bowing out without a fight. Industry conversations with companies building commercial security system hardware and access control infrastructure reveal a deep, ongoing investment in Z-Wave technology. Furthermore, the Z-Wave Alliance has poured substantial resources into developing a long-range version of its mesh network, designed to reliably transmit data over distances stretching up to a mile. As of March of this year, official ecosystem data indicated that there were more than 4,000 certified Z-Wave devices actively deployed in the market. Trident IoT Founder and CTO Mariusz Malkowski notes that he has already spoken with numerous potential customers interested in developing even more hardware based on the standard.

Malkowski also emphasized that Trident IoT’s strategic vision extends beyond a single protocol. The company is intentionally focusing on multiple wireless standards to ensure that its manufacturing clients can easily build devices capable of operating seamlessly across Z-Wave, Matter, Thread, ZigBee, or any other protocol required for a specific deployment. To achieve this, the company has assembled a specialized engineering team with deep expertise across a wide variety of Internet of Things protocols. This multi-standard approach mirrors the strategic evolution of Silicon Labs, which successfully transformed itself into a dedicated, protocol-agnostic IoT chip provider.

According to Malkowski, Silicon Labs is supportive of Trident IoT’s market entry, a sentiment underscored by the inclusion of a supporting quote from a Silicon Labs employee in Trident’s official launch press release. If Trident successfully achieves its commercial goals, the presence of an independent secondary source for Z-Wave silicon is expected to encourage more hardware manufacturers to adopt the standard while reassuring existing Z-Wave customers about long-term supply chain stability. This dynamic creates a mutually beneficial environment for both chip providers.

Ultimately, this maturation of the silicon market offers clear advantages for smart home consumers, particularly as multi-protocol hubs experience a resurgence in popularity. While the universal Matter standard has encountered notable growing pains since its initial rollout, the distinct advantages offered by long-range Z-Wave options—such as powering outdoor sensors located in distant yards or operating remote perimeter access control devices—remain highly compelling for developers and consumers alike. The classic computing joke about new standards spawning yet another competing alternative continues to play out across the smart home sector, but companies placing their bets on Z-Wave now possess a vital new option for their hardware pipelines.