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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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  • Well, on the upside, maybe we get nice Qualcomm SoCs to play with which might actually be successful unlike the Intel Quark/Intel Curie Module (Arduino 101), but the potential conflict-of-interest that being owned by a chip designer/maker is undeniable. I hope the Open Source nature of everything continues through to new Qualcomm products, and the IDE continues to be usable with other vendor's cores. But I wouldn't be surprised if this might be something that changes in the longer term.

    Thankfully, we still have what we already have and that can't really be taken away ...

    - Gough

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  • Well, on the upside, maybe we get nice Qualcomm SoCs to play with which might actually be successful unlike the Intel Quark/Intel Curie Module (Arduino 101), but the potential conflict-of-interest that being owned by a chip designer/maker is undeniable. I hope the Open Source nature of everything continues through to new Qualcomm products, and the IDE continues to be usable with other vendor's cores. But I wouldn't be surprised if this might be something that changes in the longer term.

    Thankfully, we still have what we already have and that can't really be taken away ...

    - Gough

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  • in reply to Gough Lui

    Arduino have been developing their new Zephyr-RTOS core for sometime now (still in Beta), which will work on the STM32U585 microcontroller. One aspect I like about Zephyr-RTOS is the adoption of IPC frameworks, like OpenAMP. Perfect for the Uno Q board.

  • in reply to BigG

    That's interesting to hear. I've been playing with RP2040 on Arduino via the Earl E. Philhower core and it's FreeRTOS-based from memory. But then again, most of the Nordic stuff uses Zephyr.

    But perhaps I suppose what's so unfamiliar is simply that the Uno Q board has gone from something "small and microcontrollery" to something much more like a Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone Black. Sure it's a step-up in power, but so it is also a step-up in price, complexity and (likely) power consumption. It feels very "un-Uno" but alas, I suppose people also demand "AI everything" now and having previously dabbled with Edge Impulse which is now also under Qualcomm's umbrella, I've realised that few useful models can run on even moderately powerful microcontrollers and really need SoC-grade hardware.

    I'm not sure the push towards AI and "complexity" is worth the benefit it might bring for many problems ... perhaps we're moving too fast?

    - Gough

  • in reply to Gough Lui

    AI and moving too fast? No way.  Wink 

  • in reply to Gough Lui

    Familiarity is the key word here.

    I wonder if that's the reason they went with the Uno R3 format instead of going the Portenta route. After all, the Arduino Portenta X8 is a hybrid MPU/MCU board and that has been out for a few years now.

    On the topic of Zephyr-RTOS. You can use it on the RP2040 too, although not all the functionality is available - you cannot use dual core, as yet.

  • in reply to dang74

    I've read that the acquisition is also for Qualcomm to break into the AI robotics market by creating Linux boards suitable for that application.