Qualcomm just made its biggest bet yet on the robotics revolution, acquiring Arduino - the Italian company whose $20 circuit boards power millions of hardware experiments worldwide. The deal gives Qualcomm direct access to the grassroots robotics community where tomorrow's commercial products start as weekend projects in garages and university labs.
Qualcomm wants to get closer to robot makers, and it's betting big on a surprising acquisition strategy. The chip giant announced Tuesday it's buying Arduino, the Italian electronics company whose inexpensive programmable boards have become the go-to choice for hardware tinkering worldwide.
The move represents a dramatic shift for Qualcomm, which has traditionally focused on selling chips in massive volumes to established manufacturers. Now it's diving headfirst into the scrappy world of prototyping, where ideas worth millions often start with a $20 Arduino board and some jumper wires.
Qualcomm didn't disclose the acquisition price, but said Arduino will operate as an independent subsidiary - a telling sign that the company wants to preserve the startup culture that made Arduino a household name among makers and engineers.
"The deal gives Qualcomm direct access to the tinkerers, hobbyists and companies at the lowest levels of the robotics industry," according to CNBC's coverage. Arduino products can't be used for commercial manufacturing, but they're perfect for testing concepts that might eventually need serious computing power.
That's where Qualcomm sees the opportunity. "You start to move towards prototyping, proof of concepts, and once you're ready, you can go commercial, which is something we are obviously very familiar with," Nakul Duggal, Qualcomm's general manager for automotive and IoT, told CNBC.
The timing couldn't be more critical. Nvidia has been aggressively courting robotics developers with $249 developer kits for its robot chips, positioning robotics as the company's biggest growth opportunity after AI. Meanwhile, Qualcomm has struggled to break into the developer ecosystem that increasingly drives hardware innovation.
This acquisition is part of a broader shopping spree. Duggal revealed that Qualcomm has purchased three companies in the past year - Arduino, Foundries.io, and Edge Impulse - all aimed at becoming more essential to robotics developers. The company is clearly preparing for a world where humanoid robots need the same AI computing power as self-driving cars.
The first fruit of this partnership drops immediately: Arduino will release its first Qualcomm-powered board, called the Uno Q. Priced between $45-55, it features a Qualcomm Dragonwing QRB2210 processor capable of running Linux and performing computer vision tasks - a massive upgrade from traditional microcontroller-based Arduino boards.