Qualcomm to Acquire Edge Impulse as It Seeks to Gain Ground in the Artificial Intelligence of Things
Deal sees Edge Impulse acquired lock, stock, and barrel — but non-Qualcomm hardware will still be supported.
Qualcomm has announced that it is acquiring Edge Impulse, as it — and its competitors — seeks to capitalize on the artificial intelligence (AI) boom and bring on-device capabilities to as broad an audience as possible.
"Today, Edge Impulse is excited to announce its next step forward," co-founder and chief executive officer Zach Shelby writes of the deal: "We've signed an agreement to join the Qualcomm Technologies team. This marks an exciting new chapter for us, opening up new opportunities to scale our technology and impact. Our team and mission remain the same, only now, we will have even more opportunities and capabilities to accelerate what we do best."
"We are thrilled about the opportunity to significantly enhance our IoT [Internet of Things] offerings with Edge Impulse's advanced AI-powered end-to-end platform that will complement our strategic approach to IoT transformation," adds Qualcomm's Nakul Duggal. "We anticipate that this acquisition will strengthen our leadership in AI and developer enablement, enhancing our ability to provide comprehensive technology for critical sectors such as retail, security, energy and utilities, supply chain management, and asset management. IoT opens the door for a myriad of opportunities, and success is about building real-world solutions, enabling developers and enterprises with AI capabilities to extract intelligence from data, and providing them with the tools to build the applications and services that will power the digital transformation of industries."
Founded by Jan Jongboom and Zach Shelby in 2019, Edge Impulse was designed to "democratize machine learning on edge compute" by making it easier for developers to create, customize, train, tweak, and deploy machine learning models on devices ranging from surprisingly resource-constrained microcontrollers up to graphics processors and dedicated neural network processors. "Edge Impulse gives developers a tool that automates data collection, simplifies model training, provides advanced optimization tools, and offers one-click deployment to many types of hardware," Shelby explains.
"The ease of use and versatility that Edge Impulse provides has since proven highly valuable; the company supports customers from Fortune 100 companies launching AI-empowered devices globally to cutting-edge startups aiming to solve the planet's biggest problems with novel high-tech solutions," Shelby continues. "The universality of the platform has attracted collaborations with numerous hardware, cloud, and system integration vendors. And perhaps most importantly, the ease of use that Jan and I set out to develop has brought together a community of 170,000 developers and growing."
The deal, which is subject to the usual regulatory approvals, will see Edge Impulse brought under the Qualcomm umbrella — but, Shelby says, users of other microcontroller and microprocessor products need not fear: there is no plan to make the service exclusive to Qualcomm's processor families.
More information is available on the Edge Impulse website.
