Smartphone processor and modem maker Qualcomm is acquiring Arduino, the Italian company known mainly for its open source ecosystem of microcontrollers and the software that makes them function. In its announcement, Qualcomm said that Arduino would "[retain] its brand and mission," including its "open source ethos" and "support for multiple silicon vendors."
"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," Qualcomm said in its press release. "Following this acquisition, the 33M+ active users in the Arduino community will gain access to Qualcomm Technologies’ powerful technology 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 commercialization supported by Qualcomm Technologies’ advanced technologies and extensive partner ecosystem."
Qualcomm didn't disclose what it would pay to acquire Arduino. The acquisition also needs to be approved by regulators "and other customary closing conditions."
The first fruit of this pending acquisition will be the Arduino Uno Q, a Qualcomm-based single-board computer with a Qualcomm Dragonwing QRB2210 processor installed. The QRB2210 includes a quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 CPU and a Qualcomm Adreno 702 GPU, plus Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, and combines that with a real-time microcontroller "to bridge high-performance computing with real-time control."
Qualcomm emphasized multiple times that Arduino would continue as its own ecosystem, but the concern when a large company buys any smaller open-source project is that the company will eventually begin locking the ecosystem down. That could mean eventually releasing fewer (or no) hardware or software projects to the open source community, or a decline in support for non-Qualcomm chips. It could also mean shifting more effort in the direction of Qualcomm's larger corporate clients at the expense of the educators and tinkerers in the Arduino community.
Arduino's commitment to open-source hardware and software could help keep that from happening, though. Third parties are all currently capable of manufacturing and selling their own Arduino-compatible products—the Arduino name is reserved for the company's official releases, but there are plenty of compatible ones with "-duino" suffixes out there—and if the community around the controllers and boards gets mad enough, it could attempt to fork the hardware and software to provide an alternative to whatever direction Qualcomm takes.
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