It’s the week after Italian Tech Week and the likes of Jeff Bezos have packed up their private jets and zoomed back to wherever the Tech Bros go next. The Jet Set are always on the move, but sometimes it’s better to go to a place after they’ve left.
So it was in Turin last week, lying provocatively in the foothills of the Alps to the north-west of the city. The sun was out and the atmosphere felt Himalayan. Fresh air and the days that autumn sometimes delivers. Crisp and optimistic, beautiful and powerful.
Bezos spoke the previous week about AI while President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen effused about the European tech ecosystem, perhaps over-effused about it, but maybe that was the point. As China and the US apparently race ahead, it is sometimes wise to listen to Aesop and the tale of the hare and tortoise. Slow and steady regularly wins that race.
Italy often gets overlooked when it comes to that ecosystem of Europe. London, Paris and Berlin abound, and the likes of Lisbon, Madrid, and Stockholm make it on to the PowerPoint slides of venture capitalists everywhere. But Italy, quietly and historically, has great DNA when it comes to the history of global technology.
Because before Silicon Valley, before the Valley was Silicon, before the word ‘startup’ was even coined, there was Olivetti.
The House of Olivetti
Olivetti was not merely a company; it was an idea dressed in steel and typewriter ribbon. Founded in 1908 in Ivrea, a small town an hour north of Turin, Olivetti made machines that looked and felt like the future. Sleek, ergonomic; sensual even. They were Italian design meeting industrial modernity, la dolce vita for the office desk.
In an era when machines were built to intimidate, Olivetti built machines to seduce. The Lettera 22 typewriter, still a design classic, was so elegant it made Hemingway switch from pen to typewriter keys. Its lines were the Ferrari of the literary world.
The Valentine, designed by Ettore Sottsass in 1969, turned the typewriter into pop art, bright red plastic and portable, a statement of joy in a world of grey.
But beauty wasn’t the only thing Olivetti understood. They were a company decades ahead of their time in understanding the human side of technology. Adriano Olivetti, the founder’s son, believed that capitalism could be compassionate. Workers were given healthcare, housing, cultural activities - an ecosystem before ecosystems were fashionable.
And when the computer age came calling, Olivetti didn’t shy away. They built one of Europe’s first commercially available electronic computers, the Elea 9003, in 1959, designed by architect-engineer Mario Tchou. It was modular, modern and magnetic. Italy, not California, had the world’s first programmable transistorised computer.
For a brief, incandescent moment, Europe had its own Silicon Valley in Piedmont. But the dream was fragile. Tchou died in a car accident in 1961, and Adriano Olivetti had passed away the year before. Without its visionaries, Olivetti faltered. The Americans came, the Japanese came, and Ivrea became a footnote.
But DNA, as any biologist or investor will tell you, doesn’t disappear. It mutates. It re-emerges and Ivrea wasn’t a footnote at all because it gave rise to the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (also known as Interaction Ivrea or IDII), which brought together the founders of Arduino… and the reason I’ve flown into Turin.
From Typewriters to Tinkerers
Fast forward six decades, and Italy’s technological pulse beats again. Not in the boardrooms of multinationals, but in the workshops and labs of a new kind of maker, the open-source engineer. And like Olivetti, this rebirth began not in a metropolis but in a small town with a big idea.
In 2005, in Ivrea, yes, the same Ivrea, five academics at the Interaction Design Institute created Arduino. Named after a local bar, the project aimed to make electronics accessible to artists, designers, and anyone with curiosity and a soldering iron. It also makes for a cracking founders’ story.
Arduino’s open-source microcontroller became the democratisation of hardware. Suddenly, creators didn’t need to work for Intel or Apple to build something smart. They could be a teenager in Naples, a teacher in Nairobi, or an engineer in Nagoya. If they had an idea and a USB cable, they could prototype the future.
Arduino became the quiet backbone of the maker revolution, powering everything from drones to 3D printers to wearable tech. Its ethos was pure Olivetti: design for humans, technology for all.
And last week, in the autumn of 2025, history looped back on itself.
The Qualcomm Connection
Qualcomm announced its acquisition of Arduino last week, in a move that surprised some but made perfect sense to anyone who’s followed both companies closely.
The announcement was made to the press in the Museo Nazionale dell'Automobile, another stunning example of Italian design. Later that afternoon, the buoyant founders of Arduino invited their fans to watch a two-hour show of the company where much whooping ensued. When people love Arduino, they really love Arduino.
For Qualcomm, the deal is about cementing dominance in the edge-computing and IoT markets. For Arduino, it’s the next evolutionary step, from a homespun and beloved open-source ecosystem to a scalable industrial force.
But there’s a poetic resonance too. Once again, a company born in Ivrea finds itself at the crossroads of design and computation, of Europe and America, of idealism and industry.
Qualcomm’s CEO, Cristiano Amon, was quick to praise Arduino’s ‘deep community roots and agile innovation culture’, but beneath the corporate phrasing lies something more symbolic. Arduino represents a continuity of European ingenuity that refuses to die, even when the capital, headlines, and hype migrate elsewhere.
This acquisition, if handled wisely, could turn Arduino into the beating heart of Europe’s next industrial renaissance. Picture the combination: Qualcomm’s chip architecture and global reach married to Arduino’s ecosystem of millions of developers, educators and makers. Everybody wins.
Europe’s Eternal Autumn
Turin in autumn is a metaphor for Europe itself, mature, reflective, quietly confident. The leaves turn gold not because they’re dying, but because they’re transforming.
Europe has long been accused of being the old continent, content to watch the technological revolutions happen elsewhere. But maybe, just maybe, that’s changing. The EU’s newfound assertiveness on AI regulation, digital sovereignty and semiconductor independence, backed by initiatives such as the Chips Act, suggests a Europe finally aware of its strengths.
Italy, in particular, has a knack for reinvention. Its art, architecture and cuisine have evolved for centuries without losing their soul. Now, its technology seems poised to follow suit. From Olivetti’s typewriters to Arduino’s microcontrollers, the country’s influence has always been about elegance meeting engineering.
As the world wrestles with the ethical and existential questions of AI, it’s worth remembering that innovation doesn’t just happen in code; it happens in culture. And culture is something Europe has in abundance.
The Long View
If Adriano Olivetti were alive today, he might smile at the symmetry. The machines have changed, no more typebars or ribbons, but the principles haven’t. Design still matters. Accessibility still matters. Human-centred technology still matters.
Arduino’s story, culminating (or perhaps beginning anew) with Qualcomm, is proof that Europe’s technological past is not a museum piece but a living continuum. It’s not nostalgia; it’s lineage.
Maybe it takes an American acquisition to remind Europe of its own potential. Or maybe this time, Europe will take the lesson and build something lasting again, something that doesn’t just compete with Silicon Valley but complements it, offering a different vision of what technology can be.
As the mist rolls down from the Alps and the streets of Turin glow in the soft light of October and the Arduino fanboys and fangirls leave the Museo Nazionale dell'Automobile, it’s been a very good day. Because autumn, after all, isn’t the end of something, it’s the preparation for renewal. And in that sense, Europe’s best season may just be beginning. Maybe that’s what Ursula von der Leyen was really trying to say last week.
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