--- title: The Blue Board and the Behemoth: Why Qualcomm Just... description: Qualcomm has quietly acquired Arduino, the open-source hardware platform used by millions of hobbyists, students, and engineers worldwide. The acquisition... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-blue-board-and-the-behemoth-why-qualcomm-just-bought-arduino-wcvoyhxcy twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The Blue Board and the Behemoth: Why Qualcomm Just Bought Arduino | daily.dev og:description: Qualcomm has quietly acquired Arduino, the open-source hardware platform used by millions of hobbyists, students, and engineers worldwide. The acquisition... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-blue-board-and-the-behemoth-why-qualcomm-just-bought-arduino-wcvoyhxcy og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/WcvOyhxCY.png og:image:alt: The Blue Board and the Behemoth: Why Qualcomm Just Bought Arduino og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The Blue Board and the Behemoth: Why Qualcomm Just Bought Arduino **[SK NEXUS](https://daily.dev/sources/sknexus)** · [@saqibtahirpk](https://daily.dev/saqibtahirpk) · 1 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Qualcomm has quietly acquired Arduino, the open-source hardware platform used by millions of hobbyists, students, and engineers worldwide. The acquisition raises questions about the future of Arduino's open-source ethos and accessibility — particularly for developers in emerging markets who rely on cheap clones. The piece explores the history of Arduino, the implications of a billion-dollar chip company owning the platform, and what corporate acquisitions typically mean for open-source communities. ## Content Most people scrolled past this news. Last year, Qualcomm quietly acquired Arduino. If you're not into DIY electronics, that probably means nothing to you. But here's the thing. Arduino is the reason engineering students in developing countries can prototype hardware for $3. It's the reason hobbyists were building smart homes before "smart home" was even a marketing term. Open designs. Free software. A community that made clones so cheap that a student in Pakistan could buy one from their local electronics market for under 1,000 PKR. Now all of that sits inside a chip company worth billions. Could mean more powerful boards. Could mean the open-source spirit gets quietly squeezed out. We've seen that movie before. Our writer Yousaf, who actually owns and tinkers with his Arduino board, went deep on this one. The history, the acquisition, the trade-offs, and what it means for the 30 million developers who built on this platform. Even if you've never touched a circuit board, this one's worth understanding. Open-source ecosystems don't just matter for nerds. They matter for accessibility. Have you seen a corporate acquisition actually improve an open-source project? Genuinely asking. [https://www.sknexus.org/p/qualcomm-bought-arduino](https://www.sknexus.org/p/qualcomm-bought-arduino) ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Arduino's got a new job: selling chips for its new owner](https://daily.dev/posts/arduino-s-got-a-new-job-selling-chips-for-its-new-owner-9npyp4olh) · The Register · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#hardware](https://daily.dev/tags/hardware), [#iot](https://daily.dev/tags/iot), [#embedded](https://daily.dev/tags/embedded) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-blue-board-and-the-behemoth-why-qualcomm-just-bought-arduino-wcvoyhxcy) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-blue-board-and-the-behemoth-why-qualcomm-just-bought-arduino-wcvoyhxcy","headline":"The Blue Board and the Behemoth: Why Qualcomm Just Bought Arduino","text":"Qualcomm has quietly acquired Arduino, the open-source hardware platform used by millions of hobbyists, students, and engineers worldwide. 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