Qualcomm acquires Arduino to supercharge the global maker movement

Qualcomm Technologies today announced its agreement to acquire Italian open-source hardware and software company Arduino.  

Arduino is a leading open-source hardware and software company that provides an accessible platform for creating interactive projects.

With an estimated 33 million active users, the Arduino community has expanded to address new demands and challenges, offering products for IoT, wearables, 3D printing, and embedded environments.

From student days in Italy to a cornerstone of the maker movement

Arduino was created in 2005 at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Italy by Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles, Tom Igoe, Gianluca Martino, and David Mellis.

Named after a local bar, the project aimed to make microcontrollers affordable and easy to use for design students.

By releasing both hardware and software as open source, Arduino quickly grew into a global platform for makers, educators, and developers.  

Over time, it expanded from a simple educational tool into a cornerstone of the maker movement, powering DIY projects, art, prototypes, and commercial products worldwide.

Supercharging developer productivity at the expense of European hacker independence

The transaction accelerates Qualcomm Technologies’ strategy to empower developers by facilitating access to its unmatched portfolio of edge technologies and products. 

By combining Qualcomm Technologies’ leading‑edge processing, graphics, computer vision, and AI with Arduino’s simplicity, affordability, and community, the Company is poised to supercharge developer productivity across industries. 

Arduino will preserve its open approach and community spirit while unlocking a full‑stack platform for modern development.

Further, Arduino will retain its independent brand, tools, and mission, while continuing to support a wide range of microcontrollers and microprocessors from multiple semiconductor providers as it enters this next chapter within the Qualcomm family.

Following this acquisition, the 33M+ active users in the Arduino community will gain access to Qualcomm Technologies’ powerful tech stack and global reach.

Entrepreneurs, businesses, tech professionals, students, educators, and hobbyists will be empowered to rapidly prototype and test new solutions, with a clear path to commercialisation supported by Qualcomm Technologies’ advanced technologies and extensive partner ecosystem.

However, this acquisition marks a significant moment—and arguably a blow to Europe’s maker community.

Even though Arduino will retain its brand and community, strategic control shifts to a US tech giant—raising questions about Europe’s ability to keep home-grown innovation and infrastructure under European stewardship.

Meet UNO Q: Arduino’s most advanced board yet, powered by Qualcomm

The new Arduino UNO Q is a next-generation single board computer featuring a “dual brain” architecture—a Linux Debian-capable microprocessor and a real-time microcontroller—to bridge high-performance computing with real-time control.

Powered by the Qualcomm Dragonwing™ QRB2210 processor running a full Linux environment, UNO Q is designed to help enable AI-powered vision and sound solutions that react to their environment, ranging from sophisticated smart home solutions to industrial automation systems. UNO Q is designed to become the go‑to tool for every developer—accessible, versatile, and ready for lifelong learning and innovation.

UNO Q is the first Arduino board to work with Arduino App Lab, a new, integrated development environment built to unify the Arduino development journey across Real-time OS, Linux, Python and AI flows to make development faster and easier. App Lab offers developers an open-source platform which is designed to rapidly ideate, prototype and scale AI-powered solutions to production.

Seamless integration of App Lab with the Edge Impulse platform also helps streamline and accelerate the process of building, fine-tuning, and optimising AI models using real-world data for a wide range of capabilities such as object/human detection, anomaly detection, image classification, ambient sound recognition, and keyword spotting.

“With our acquisitions of Foundries.io, Edge Impulse, and now Arduino, we are accelerating our vision to democratize access to our leading‑edge AI and computing products for the global developer community,” said Nakul Duggal, Group General Manager, Automotive, Industrial and Embedded IoT, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. 

“Arduino has built a vibrant global community of developers and creators. By combining their open-source ethos with Qualcomm Technologies’ portfolio of leading-edge products and technologies, we’re helping enable millions of developers to create intelligent solutions faster and more efficiently — including a path towards global commercialisation by leveraging the scale of our ecosystem.”

“Joining forces with Qualcomm Technologies allows us to supercharge our commitment to accessibility and innovation,” said Fabio Violante, CEO, Arduino.

“The launch of UNO Q is just the beginning— we’re excited to empower our global community with powerful tools that make AI development intuitive, scalable, and open to everyone.”

“Our passion for simplicity, affordability, and community gave rise to a movement that changed technology,” said Massimo Banzi, Co-founder, Arduino.

“By joining Qualcomm Technologies, we’ll bring cutting-edge AI tools to our community while staying true to what has always mattered most to us.”

The closing of this transaction is subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions.