At todays “blink to think” event a new Arduino board was released, the Arduino Q, however perhaps most important was the announcement that chipmaker Qualcomm had acquired Arduino for an undisclosed amount.
After watching the entire two hours of announcements I’m not crazy about this but I remain cautiously optimistic.
My first Arduino was the 2009 Duemilanove followed by multiple other boards, Uno R3, R4, Mega, leonardo, lilypad, Mini, Sense, etc.
I still have my first breadboarded “Arduino” while getting really into electronics in about 2010.
Full upfront disclosure: At the time of writing, this author has a very minor holding in Qualcomm shares, purchased in April 2025, shortly after their acquisition of Edge Impulse.
You see, for years I have been a huge fan of both Arduino and Edge Impulse. I truly believe in AI “at the edge” or on device. TinyML as it was once known ran on select Arduino boards, and has expanded to larger more capable models run on beefed-up dedicated accelerator hardware as well. Large or small, Edge Impulse makes collecting data, training small AI models, and running inference easy. It runs on a bunch of different boards/chips, and that has not changed so far after 6 months under Qualcomm. The founders remain to this date, and this is what I hope for Arduino.
The Edge Impulse service had been built into the Arduino IDE a while ago in a slick software white labelling which is why todays news seems to make sense to me.
And while this reads as huge chip conglomerate absorbing a beloved open-source hardware company and community, they didn’t need to buy. They could have just taken, like many clone or knock-off arduino boards, it’s all open and free to do so.
Some of the community reaction has been negative. Phillip Torrone aka PT of Adafruit has written about, advocated, and contributed to open source hardware for years. There may be literally no one more qualified to talk about open source.
Recently critical of Arduino’s closed source “Pro” boards and VC funding, he writes about “Turning Maker Dreams into Shareholder Value“. With hints of 2014 documentary Print the Legend as a recent blueprint, I really respect Phil’s views.
Here is where I feel there might be some hope…
First, Edge Impulse has so far been allowed to continue independently and continue to support competing silicone.
Arduino vows to continue to support and add other future vendors.
Today’s hardware announcement from Arduino runs Debian Linux, runs Zephyr RTOS. The Qualcomm accelerator chip supports OpenGL ES. Qualcomm has a Director of Software – Open Source. The CEO Fabio Violante says there is Gerber files and schematics coming soon for the Arduino Q.
It supports Qwiic I2CÂ connection made popular by both Sparkfun and Adafruit.
They seem to really align with many open source initiatives at this point.
Sure this could change at any time. Time will tell.
I’ve got two on pre-order.
Like I said, at this point I’m cautiously optimistic.
