Arduino has a new job selling chips for its new owner. Let's not pretend otherwise
- Reference: 1760343305
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/10/13/arduino_new_job/
- Source link:
Qualcomm says its partnership with Arduino will make it more accessible to developers, and make its technologies more easily available to the edge. Which is true enough, up to a point.
Qualcomm solders Arduino to its edge AI ambitions, debuts Raspberry Pi rival [1]READ MORE
A lot of cheap dev boards and Qualcomm-flavored software tools will certainly give the company access to entire sectors previously excluded. Qualcomm hitherto only talked to big old companies who'd sign big old contracts with big old secrets. Now Qualcomm silicon and software can get into the hands of individuals, educators and inventive start-ups. That's where the future comes from, especially where the better sort of AI fertilizes the better sort of robotics.
Most robots are edge devices. Qualcomm needs to be there.
This sort of thinking qualifies as enlightenment from such a secretive corporate monolith. Except for one thing: Qualcomm is not in partnership with Arduino. It owns Arduino. It says Arduino will remain independent from the main company, and nothing will change that. This cannot be true.
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The way to have a partnership with Arduino that guarantees the freedom to make its own choices and maintain its existing strategies is to have a partnership that does these things. If you buy something, you control it. That's rather the point. If you want to support an open source hardware and software platform, contribute open source hardware and software. A partnership can be dissolved by either partner, and this is not the case here. If Arduino wants to do something Qualcomm does not like, only one will win, and it begins with the letter Q.
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To see what a difference this can make, look at the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It uses Broadcom silicon for the SoCs in all its main SBCs. That means it has to ship closed firmware, because Broadcom dislikes sharing information as much as Qualcomm does. Yet Raspberry Pi is seen as an exemplar of an enabling, independent, user-focused and dev-focused platform. Not perfect, but the organization has put in hard years of building and supporting the software, education, and continuity which powers that remarkable, unique ecosystem.
Qualcomm could have done the same. It could have said it was producing SBCs with Arduino, was committing to collaborate on OS and promotion around a shared vision of enabling new accessible technologies to new markets. That's what the slick marketing is trying to imply. To reiterate: it did not do that. Qualcomm bought Arduino. And it can no more handwave away the implications for the future than if Broadcom had taken control of all things Pi.
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It honestly doesn't matter what arguments are made that things really will continue as before, nor that it's in Qualcomm's best interests to cultivate the open source, massively diverse ethos of the existing Arduino universe. Nor that all this is just too big and well established, too well protected by permissive licensing, too embedded in the fabric of the world to change. Qualcomm paid good money to own that soul – how much good money, we don't know. Nobody's going to tell us anything if they can help it.
Qualcomm is here to chew gum and sell chips, and it's all out of gum. The Arduino purchase is there to sell chips. It may be part of a long-term strategy that's nicely aligned with what Arduino's done so far, but if that alignment changes then Arduino becomes a brand that does its master's bidding. Qualcomm is a publicly traded company, and the moment that internal and shareholder sentiment turns against Arduino adding shareholder value? That's it. Same if Arduino goes so well that it becomes part of internal turf wars, or does so poorly that it's left on the midwinter rooftop.
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The archaeology of the corporate world is full of the empty husks of acquired companies bought for nominally strategic reasons only to wither and die the moment strategy changed. You keep your independence in corporates to the extent that you have powerful sponsors and internal allies. The newly acquired rarely have either.
That's before getting into the weeds of corporate culture, of world views and values so incompatible that those who are bought discover they need to get out at the same time that their new management comes to the same conclusion. You can dissolve partnerships when that happens – see Microsoft and IBM – but you can't dissolve acquisitions. You can only destroy.
It is very, very unlikely that by 2030, the name Arduino will stand for what it stands for now. Qualcomm will consume it. Whether Qualcomm gets prominence in new sectors in return, is unknowable. That Arduino's legacy will continue independently of Qualcomm is far more likely, because open source is adept at shape-shifting.
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There will be a great open source hardware and software microcontroller platform, but what will it be called? Ar du I no?
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/07/qualcomm_arduino_acquisition/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aOzNtKRtkfzOahuML6vMvwAAAAA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/06/at_last_microsoft_leads_the/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/08/vmware_in_court_opinion/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/26/opinion_column_copyright_ads/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/14/the_plan_for_linux_after/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aOzNtKRtkfzOahuML6vMvwAAAAA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
It was nice knowing you
Getting swallowed by a whale is a life-changing...
You get digested and excreted when swallowed by a whale. There is, unfortunately, no other way.
Even if the whale got sick and you'd got out when the whale barfed, you'd still just become a puddle of junk left on the side walk.
Cynical article, and sadly also 100% accurate.
Worse, the supply chain hanging off the Arduine project got it in the neck by this deal too - the gazaillion little shops making things you can add to the board to do something esoteric. In one fell swoop, an entire ecosystem is hanging by a thread. Better start preserving what there is now.
Who agreed to this, and how much does he/she personally make out of this? I think that ought to be public.
Beyond the potential problems stated, also a wider concern which is that for all the EU Bluster about reducing external dependencies like the CHIPS act (supposedly €40b+ investment), etc. etc., the EU (and the UK), have no way to stop real success stories like Arduino (and the UK's ARM) from being snapped up on a whim by giant overseas corporations.
"Protectionism" is a dirty word this side of the Atlantic, but truth is until we start practising some of it, nothing will change. It would take pretty deep pockets for someone to swallow ASML, but it could still happen - if the EU is truly serious about creating a roadmap for self-sufficiency, then that path starts with keeping the ownership of companies like Arduino inside Europe.
Has to
That means it has to ship closed firmware
But do they though?
RPi could have used its power to change the behaviour or change the supplier, to the more open one.
Massimo was always an asshole.
What's next?
This is bad enough, but I dread the day when I'll read in the news that some Big Business has acquired Raspberry Pi Holdings. Because that, too, is one really tasty morsel.
This is not going to end well
This of course is not going to end well, but I expect Arduino clones to pick up the whole market space. Since it's open source (at least until yesterday) then the "pre-acquisition" design can live on forever, with hardware produced by Chinese manufacturers and the software part community maintained. Just call it "Harder Duino"
The End
Beginning of the end for Arduino.
Qualcom makes chips, but only as a way to double dip on royalties.
Generally they buy up companies and sell off the factory plant, assets etc, bury the product and add the IP to their portfolio. If this is different, then it's unusual.
I expect that if they can't use it as a royalties revenue stream it will be resold.