Qualcomm Technologies Inc announced an agreement to acquire Edge Impulse Inc at Embedded World Germany. The deal subject to customary closing conditions, marks a strategic move to strengthen the company’s AI and IoT capabilities. By integrating Edge Impulse’s advanced AI-powered platform, Qualcomm aims to enhance its comprehensive solutions and developer offerings. This acquisition reflects Qualcomm’s commitment to supporting digital transformation across multiple industries. The announcement underscores a vision for future innovations in connected technologies and solutions.
Qualcomm’s acquisition of Edge Impulse Inc is designed to strengthen its leadership in both AI and IoT sectors. The move supports a comprehensive strategy that includes a detailed chipset roadmap, unified software architecture and a suite of cloud and service solutions. Additionally, the company provides developer resources and collaborates with a broad ecosystem of partners. This approach ensures scalable and secure solutions that address the diverse needs of industries such as retail, energy and enterprise operations.
Edge Impulse’s end-to-end AI platform currently supports over 170000 developers. The platform simplifies the process of data collection, model training and deployment across various edge devices. It is compatible with a wide range of microcontrollers and processors including those with AI accelerators. Developers can build solutions for applications such as asset tracking, anomaly detection and predictive maintenance by utilizing capabilities like computer vision and audio analysis. The user-friendly interface requires minimal coding expertise, ensuring rapid results.
Qualcomm expects that integrating Edge Impulse’s platform will enable developers to target its Dragonwing processors. These processors offer improved on-device AI inferencing, computer vision and graphics performance. Integration with Qualcomm AI Hub is projected to boost inference performance up to four times while reducing model size and memory footprint. Edge Impulse will continue operating under its current brand and remain committed to its developer community and partners. The acquisition reinforces Qualcomm’s approach to IoT transformation.
