Here are the 10 coolest and most noteworthy vendors who are innovating and making big moves within the hardware space.
The heart of IoT remains hardware. Hardware is what is used to build the sensors sitting on the manufacturing floor, in automobiles, in medical devices, in retail scanners and bar-code readers, and a million other places collecting data that is vital to understanding the processes companies use every day.
Hardware is also essential in building the edge servers that collect the data from those sensors, security that ensures those systems are protected from attacks, the actuators that remotely perform physical actions, and the communications devices that connect everything together.
As part of the 2026 IoT 50, CRN features 10 of the vendors whose hardware helps drive the IoT business. Included are chipmakers like AMD, Intel and Nvidia, along with device, security and wireless connectivity suppliers.
These are companies whose technologies put the “cutting edge” in edge computing, with products that ensure the IoT business is a dynamic one.
AMD
Lisa Su
Chair, CEO
While semiconductor manufacturer AMD is best known for its server and PC CPUs and for its GPUs, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company also offers a broad range of IoT offerings targeting industrial, edge and smart infrastructure applications, including Ryzen and EPYC embedded processors, other chips for IoT gateways and smart sensors, and system-on-modules.
Axelera AI
Fabrizio Del Maffeo
Co-Founder, CEO
Axelera AI develops an AI hardware and software platform aimed at accelerating computer vision on edge devices. With its proprietary in-memory computing and RISC-V controlled data flow technology, the Eindhoven, Netherlands-based company’s platform looks to provide high performance and usability with low cost and power consumption. The company’s Voyager SDK helps developers deploy AI applications to the edge.
Efficient Computer
Brandon Lucia
CEO
Efficient Computer develops energy-efficient computing devices for general-purpose computing and embedded applications. The Pittsburgh-based company’s Efficient Fabric architecture was engineered to minimize energy consumption while providing high performance for applications written in high-level programming languages. Its offerings target edge devices, wearables and other applications.
Intel
Lip-Bu Tan
CEO
CPU, GPU and memory manufacturer Intel also has a very robust IoT business via its Open Edge Platform that helps enterprises build, deploy, run, secure and manage edge and AI offerings. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company’s latest Open Edge Platform 2025.2 version includes composable ingredients for building production-quality multimodal edge AI applications along with the ability to manage and orchestrate edge devices and software.
Morse Micro
Michael De Nil
Co-Founder, CEO
Morse Micro is a designer of Wi-Fi chips that have shipped inside billions of devices. The Sydney, Australia-based company said its Wi-Fi HaLow-standard wireless devices for IoT and industrial applications holds the distance record for a 10-mile video call, giving it the reliability and connectivity for IoT applications across a wide range of industries.
Nexa
Robert Morcos
Founder, CEO
Formerly known as Socia Mobile, Hollywood, Fla.-based Nexa is an IoT design company specializing in custom mobility devices for major companies across health-care, transportation and retail industries. Its product lines include enterprise-grade mobility devices, an enterprise device management offering and rugged mobile devices. Nexa earlier this year acquired Sonim, a developer of ultra-rugged, mission-critical communication devices.
Nvidia
Jensen Huang
Founder, CEO
AI infrastructure powerhouse Nvidia has built an IoT business that brings data from the edge to feed many AI applications. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company’s Nvidia Jetson Platform for Edge AI is a series of small AI-optimized modules for embedded applications ranging from entry-level Jetson Nano smart cameras and home robotics to Jetson Thor for real-time reasoning for physical AI.
Qualcomm
Cristiano Amon
President, CEO
Qualcomm’s Dragonwing IoT line includes cameras, commercial infrastructure, industrial connectivity, industrial infrastructure, robotics and drones, and on-premises AI appliances, all of which aim to help businesses unlock the power of real-time data processing, accelerate transformation and harness the future of connectivity. The San Diego-based company’s Dragonwing IQ-X series of CPUs are also the foundation for high-performance edge industrial PCs.
SiMa.ai
Krishna Rangasayee
Founder, CEO
SiMa.ai develops a purpose-built, software-centric physical AI platform that it says offers best-in-class performance, power efficiency and ease of use for scaling physical AI across robotics, automotive, industrial automation, aerospace and defense, smart vision and health care. The San Jose, Calif.-based company’s products include MLSoC system on chip and production-ready boards and developer kits, along with related software.
Zebra Technologies
Bill Burns
CEO
Zebra Technologies designs hardware, software and automation products and services for intelligent operations targeting retail, health care, manufacturing, logistics and more. The Lincolnshire, Ill.-based company offers rugged mobile computing, bar-code scanning, RFID readers, thermal printing and retail task management software. Its IoT Connector software gathers data from cloud-capable edge devices including bar-code scanners and RFID readers.
