Z-Wave Gets a Vital Boost With the Launch of New Chip Provider Trident IoT

If anyone needed further proof that the arrival of the Matter smart home standard is not going to completely obliterate pre-existing wireless protocols anytime soon, they need look no further than the official launch of Trident IoT. Founded earlier this year in April, Trident IoT is a new enterprise specifically devoted to designing, building, and supporting Z-Wave chips and devices. The company burst onto the scene with a major announcement: it is just a month away from taping out its first silicon chips and plans to distribute physical samples to eager customers before the close 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, developers, and hardware manufacturers discussing the Z-Wave protocol consistently praised the mesh network’s renowned reliability while simultaneously expressing frustration over a persistent structural vulnerability: only a single company, Zensys, provided the silicon. This monopoly long worried device manufacturers and consumers alike. The market desperately wanted a reliable second source for chips to keep manufacturing pricing in check and to act as a crucial safety net in the unlikely event that the original silicon provider ever went out of business.

The historical path toward achieving a secondary chip source has been long and winding. Back in 2008, Zensys was acquired by Sigma Designs, immediately sparking renewed industry hopes that another silicon manufacturer would finally emerge or that the proprietary standard would be opened up to wider manufacturing. Unfortunately, Sigma Designs kept the underlying radio protocol tightly closed. A decade later, in 2018, when Silicon Labs announced its acquisition of Sigma Designs, Z-Wave advocates and hardware developers felt a fresh wave of excitement.

Momentum picked up significantly in 2020 when Silicon Labs initiated the process of opening up the standard by officially spinning out the Z-Wave Alliance into an independent organization. Building on that momentum, the Z-Wave Alliance announced in 2022 that the complete source code was finally available to anyone wishing to use it, and that the core technology had been successfully ported to a new chip architecture.

Despite these progressive milestones, the broader smart home market evolved rapidly during those intervening years. Smart homes surged in mainstream popularity, and industry conversations about competing radio standards were increasingly overshadowed by an intense focus on cross-vendor interoperability. Consumers and developers alike stopped worrying as much about whether a device relied fundamentally on Z-Wave or ZigBee, shifting their attention instead to whether a particular sensor could seamlessly bridge ecosystems to work with Google Nest or Amazon Alexa.

During this transitional phase, traditional commercial security companies continued relying heavily on Z-Wave for their proprietary access control and security installations, while hardcore do-it-yourself enthusiasts actively sought out home automation hubs equipped with native Z-Wave radios. However, after major tech conglomerates publicly pledged their collective weight behind the Matter standard—a protocol designed to leverage Wi-Fi and Thread for unified smart home communication—it began to look to many industry pundits as though legacy wireless technologies like Z-Wave would inevitably fade into obsolescence.

Yet, despite facing stiff competition from the industry’s largest technology players, Z-Wave is refusing to go quietly. Discussions with companies currently manufacturing security system hardware and complex physical access control devices reveal that a substantial segment of the market remains deeply invested in the Z-Wave standard. Furthermore, the Z-Wave Alliance has poured considerable engineering effort into developing advanced iterations of the technology, including a long-range version of the mesh network capable of reliably transmitting data over distances spanning an entire mile. As of March of this year, the active ecosystem boasted more than 4,000 certified Z-Wave devices. Trident IoT Founder and Chief Technology Officer Mariusz Malkowski reports that he has already engaged in extensive discussions with potential enterprise customers looking to build even more devices on the platform.

Crucially, Malkowski has emphasized that Trident IoT will not limit its scope exclusively to a single wireless protocol. The company is actively focusing on multiple communication standards to ensure that its client base can manufacture versatile devices capable of operating smoothly with Z-Wave, Matter, Thread, ZigBee, or any other protocol required by a specific deployment. To achieve this, Trident has assembled a deep bench of engineering talent specializing in a wide variety of distinct Internet of Things protocols. This multi-standard strategy mirrors the successful approach taken by Silicon Labs in its evolution into a dedicated, comprehensive IoT chip provider.

In a sign of industry camaraderie, Malkowski notes that Silicon Labs is fully supportive of Trident IoT’s market entry, even featuring a supportive statement from a Silicon Labs employee within Trident’s official press launch materials. Industry analysts expect that if Trident successfully establishes itself in the marketplace, the presence of a viable secondary source for Z-Wave silicon will encourage more hardware manufacturers to adopt the standard while reassuring existing Z-Wave customers. Ultimately, this dynamic creates a healthy competitive environment that benefits both silicon vendors.

From an end-user perspective, the introduction of a new chip provider arrives at an opportune time, particularly as dedicated home automation hubs appear to be making a notable commercial comeback. While the Matter protocol has undoubtedly brought valuable unification to the smart home space, it has also experienced its fair share of growing pains during its rollout. Meanwhile, the distinct technical advantages offered by long-range Z-Wave options—such as the ability to reliably power outdoor perimeter sensors, deep backyard installations, or distant access control hardware—remain exceptionally valuable for complex residential and commercial deployments.

The famous XKCD comic strip trope regarding the proliferation of yet another competing standard continues to play out in real-time across the smart home landscape. Even so, for hardware companies and developers placing their commercial bets on the proven reliability of Z-Wave, the launch of Trident IoT ensures they now have a viable, independent option moving forward.