Broadcom today made its third announcement on Wi-Fi 8 hardware, introducing the first enterprise Wi-Fi 8 access point (AP) platform and new enterprise switches built for the “AI Era”.
Prior to this, the company unveiled its first Wi-Fi 8 chips in October 2025, along with a second round of chips and a new Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) at CES 2026.
To date, Broadcom has been the most aggressive chipmaker in the push for Wi-Fi 8 adoption, which it calls the new Wi-Fi standard for the “AI Era”.
Enterprise Wi-Fi 8 AP platform for Edge AI
Broadcom says the new, first-on-market enterprise-grade Wi-Fi 8 AP platform is powered by a new APU chip, model BCM49438, designed to “optimize wireless networking and AI acceleration at the enterprise edge.”
The chip maker says enterprise OEMs can pair this high-performance APU chip with its latest enterprise Wi-Fi 8 radio chips, the BCM43840, BCM43844, and BCM43820, to build complete Wi-Fi 8 access points of various configurations and performance grades that enable “edge AI processing, real-time optimization, and adaptive intelligence across all frequency bands.”
Like most enterprise and business access points, these will be PoE devices with multi-Gigabit uplink ports.
Complementary Trident X3+ switch platform
Additionally, Broadcom unveiled an enterprise-grade switch platform, the Trident X3+ BCM56390, along with its multi-gigabit PHY and PoE power sourcing equipment (PSE) chips.
Broadcom says the Trident X3+ is engineered with a security-first approach and features up to 48 multi-gigabit ports to support high-density Wi-Fi 8 deployments.
Most notably, this is the first PoE switch to integrate PQC-compliant Media Access Control Security ( MACsec) across all ports and includes a Secure Boot engine with a Hardware Root-of-Trust, ensuring comprehensive, end-to-end security across the entire wired and wireless network.
Additionally, Broadcom’s new multi-gigabit PHY chips, including the BCM84918, BCM54908, and BCM54908E, when coupled with the Trident X3+, can provide seamless, high-speed AP connectivity and PoE PSE chips that deliver optimal power and efficiency.
The new Trident X3+ switch platform is designed to complement the Wi-Fi 8 AP platform above, delivering a “unified architecture that maximizes performance, efficiency, and security for an enterprise Wi-Fi 8 wireless network.”
As a result, Broadcom says its new enterprise network solutions come with three significant industry firsts to address the challenges of the transition to Wi-Fi 8 during the age of AI:
- Comprehensive, End-to-End SecurBroadcom’scom’s portfolio is the first to implement MACsec across all switch ports and access points, delivering complete, end-to-end security.
- Extensive Analytics: The Wi-Fi 8 solutions introduce advanced telemetry and
analytics engines, covering the entire portfolio from the latest Wi-Fi 8 access points to the campus switching infrastructure. - Integrated Edge AI: Advanced AI model acceleration is delivered through an
Integrated Edge AI/ML engine on the Wi-Fi 8 AP, eliminating the need for the added cost of a separate NPU or coprocessor.
Availability
Broadcom it’s it’s currently sampling the complete enterprise Wi-Fi 8 AP and switch solution, including the new BCM49438 APU with Wi-Fi 8 radio chips and Trident X3+ BCM56390 switch with multi-gigabit PHY and PoE PSE chips, to its early access customers and partnIt’s It’s estimated that final products will be available within a year or so.
