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Qualcomm to acquire Arduino

ckton

https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2025/10/qualcomm-to-acquire-arduino-accelerating-developers--access-to-i

I personally don't know how to feel towards this news but coming from someone working for a company that uses a lot of Arduino shields made by other semiconductor companies, this could be good news for better support and improved performance or a slow yet significant increase in board prices, which may force beginners to move to cheaper alternatives i.e. ESP boards.

I wonder how will this affect open-source hardware and software movement moving forward.

Let me know what others think about this news.

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  • in reply to DAB

    It wasn't too long ago (just a couple of years) that there were massive stockouts of Raspberry Pis, and I remember looking for alternatives. What I discovered when using them was that hooking up sensors to these other SBCs wasn't that simple.

    It then dawned on me how much work Raspberry Pi had put into its distro's to get peripherals and sensors working properly. Something that's often taken for granted. That certainly takes a great deal of effort and money, and I'd be surprised if Qualcomm wants to invest in doing that themselves. Of course, Arduino probably has one of the best-supported sensor library ecosystems in the world, so that has to be of great value - it's been a long while since I've found a sensor that doesn't have a working Arduino library.

    So, we now potentially have a new market, which combines MPU (Qualcomm AI, Edge etc.) with realtime MCU (& Arduino sensor libraries). Plus the connectivity linked with Arduino Cloud. Will be interesting to see how this pans out.