Qualcomm to acquire Arduino and unveil the Uno Q board

Qualcomm has agreed to acquire Arduino, the Italian company best known for its open source microcontroller and single board computer platforms, and the two firms on Tuesday unveiled a new Arduino board, the Uno Q. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed and Qualcomm said the transaction remains subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions. Qualcomm is based in San Diego; Arduino is based in Italy.

Qualcomm said the acquisition is intended to expand access to its edge technologies for the Arduino community, which the companies say includes more than 33 million developers. Qualcomm also said Arduino will retain its independent brand, tools and mission and will continue to support a range of microcontrollers and processors from multiple semiconductor providers. The companies did not provide a timeline for closing the deal.

Alongside the acquisition announcement, Arduino introduced the Uno Q, a so called dual brain board that pairs Qualcomm silicon with a dedicated microcontroller. The board combines a Qualcomm Dragonwing QRB2210 system on chip with a 32 bit STM32U585 microcontroller. It is designed to boot a full Debian Linux distribution for...