Electronics giant Texas Instruments (TI) is working with California-based Afero to create a seamless and secure IoT platform.

TI’s first wifi microcontrollers (MCUs) purpose-built for IoT combined with Afero’s secure IoT software platform deliver a boost for connected devices with affordability, reliability, security and user-friendly development. Together, the two companies are working to provide a US-sourced supply chain.

Today, Afero powers a smart home platform used in millions of homes across America. Demonstrations at this week’s CES in Las Vegas are showing how, TI’s wifi chips work with the Afero-powered smart home platform.

Designers can evaluate TI’s wifi portfolio and the Afero IoT software platform with a developer programme to accelerate adoption in personal electronics, industrial and enterprise markets. The ecosystem provides ease of use and fast, reliable operation to allow secure, direct connectivity to the cloud for any device.

Afero not only uses hardware roots of trust, but also delivers end-to-end encrypted sessions to create a VPN-grade channel on microcontroller-class processors, thereby adding an additional layer of protection. This capability has ensured Afero devices remain protected, even during attacks that have compromised and exploited other ecosystems.

“For true enterprise-grade security, we must move beyond software-only and establish verifiable trust at the deepest layer: the silicon itself,” said Joe Britt, CEO of Afero. “Our partnership with Texas Instruments, which is expanding its US manufacturing footprint, is a critical step towards supply chain resilience and enterprise assurance in the connected world.”

Afero’s IoT software platform combined with TI’s wifi MCUs delivers a robust, end-to-end ecosystem for modern, secure IoT products.

TI’s CC3501E (www.ti.com/product/CC3501E) and CC3551E (www.ti.com/product/CC3551E) support the latest multi-band Wifi 6 and Bluetooth Low Energy 5.4 connectivity protocols, in addition to integrated hardware security, allowing data to be transferred quickly, securely and with best-in-class interoperability in any installation. Engineers can use TI’s wifi portfolio to connect products securely to the cloud.

“As the largest foundational semiconductor manufacturer in the USA, TI provides a reliable supply of high-quality analogue and embedded processing chips to support Afero’s next-generation secure architecture,” said Marian Kost, TI (www.ti.com) vice president. “This collaboration is a powerful example of how product and manufacturing innovation combine to enable a smarter world.”

The rapid AI-driven growth in data centre workloads has been matched with a significant increase in data generation and processing at the edge. A widely cited analysis from Gartner projected that by 2025, 75% of enterprise-generated data will be processed outside a traditional centralised data centre or cloud, while IDC anticipates 60% of the Global 2000 will double their investment on computing resources outside traditional data centres. At the same time, the emergence of physical AI and embodied AI points to the growing need for IoT devices to enable and use AI.

The Afero platform addresses this by enabling both data-centric AI, which ensures the validity, veracity and semantics of data at inception, and local processing capabilities that allow data reduction and federated processing before encrypted data are sent to their next destination, all with frictionless security.

“Frictionless security has always been a design principle at Afero,” said Bret Jordan, chief security strategist of Afero. “This includes Afero’s commitment to the CISA secure-by-design pledge, efforts to enable the forthcoming US Cyber Trust Mark, active preparations for post-quantum cryptography, leadership of future IoT standards efforts at the ITU-T, and the recognition that secure IoT and operational technology are critical for the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) process.”

In addition to being secure by design, the Afero platform reduces friction with a patented, pairing-free setup and onboarding workflow that improves the customer experience, which enables reliable fast onboarding and easy-to-use device management.

Afero (afero.io) technology powers millions of devices across 200 product categories from more than 50 manufacturers. It is a privately held company based in Los Altos, California, and backed by investors such as Crosspoint Capital.