How Zephyr became the leading open-source RTOS for IoT

Zephyr RTOS has rapidly grown into the most widely adopted open-source real-time operating system for secure, connected, and low-power embedded devices. Hosted by the Linux Foundation and backed by a vibrant community of contributors, Zephyr offers much more than an RTOS kernel—it’s a comprehensive, modular, portable, and scalable ecosystem trusted by thousands of developers around the world.

One of the earliest adopters and the top contributor to Zephyr, Nordic Semiconductor recognized the project’s potential back in 2016 and made the strategic decision to adopt it as the foundation for its nRF Connect SDK. That decision has enabled Nordic to deliver robust, production-grade software offerings across a wide portfolio of wireless SoCs, helping developers bring innovative wireless products to market faster.

In this webinar, Kate Stewart from the Linux Foundation, along with Carles Cufi and Ali Aljaani, gives a behind-the-scenes look at Zephyr’s evolution, its growing role as an industry standard, and how Nordic contributes to the open-source community.

Agenda:
00:00 Intro
02:30 Is Zephyr just an RTOS?
07:05 Zephyr 2016 vs. today
13:35 Why Nordic chose Zephyr
21:10 Inside nRF Connect SDK
26:00 Nordic’s contributions to Zephyr
30:32 Getting started with Zephyr-based software development
34:50 Zephyr Developer Summit 2025
36:35 Q&A

This is a recording of a live webinar held on July 2nd 2025. The slides from the webinar can be downloaded here: https://view-su3.highspot.com/viewer/...