The ESP32-E22 tri-band Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.4 module has received a Wi-Fi CERTIFIED certificate from the Wi-Fi Alliance, and Espressif has also released WiFi and Bluetooth Linux drivers for the chip.The ESP32-E22 was first unveiled at CES 2026 with a dual-core RISC-V processor clocked at up to 500 MHz, 1MB RAM, tri-band WiFi 6E tested up to 2.1 Gbps with iperf, and dual-mode Bluetooth 5.4/6.0. While it also features 41 GPIO pins, it’s not mainly designed for IoT projects, but instead targets host-based wireless systems needing WiFi 6E / Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity through PCIe 2.0 or SDIO interfaces. In other words, the ESP32-E22 will likely show on M.2 modules, competing against similar products from MediaTek and Intel.Espressif has not said which module was tested for the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED certificate, but I suspect it should be the upcoming ESP32-E22-M2-1 M.2 module listed on the company’s website.From the certificate, it was tested under Linux, rather than Windows, with a range of certifications for network management (WMM, Wi-Fi Agile Multiband), Security (WPA-Personal/Enterprise, WPA3-Personal/Enterprise, Wi-Fi Enhanced Open), and Wi-Fi MAC/PHY, including 2.4, 5, and 6 GHz bands, and 802.11b/g/n/ac/ax.The chip was tested in Station mode with 2×2 MIMO, up to 40 MHz channel width at 2.4 GHz, 160 MHz at 5 GHz and 6GHz. I don’t see any access point tests from the certificate; however, AP mode will also be supported.This brings us to the second part of today’s news: the open-source Linux driver for the ESP32-E22 chip/module. Currently, only station mode over PCIe and Bluetooth over USB are supported, but more is coming: