PickNik Robotics

Robotics · Open Source · Semiconductors

Acquisition

Qualcomm to acquire open-source robotics steward PickNik

The chipmaker is buying software to lock developers into its hardware before robotics scales.

• Qualcomm Technologies agreed to acquire PickNik Inc., the longtime steward of the open-source MoveIt robotics manipulation framework; financial terms were not disclosed.
• Founded in 2015 in Boulder, Colorado, PickNik grew out of work on MoveIt at Willow Garage and the ROS project, and built MoveIt Pro, a commercial platform with 600+ pre-built manipulation skills for deploying AI to robot arms.
• MoveIt 1 and MoveIt 2 will remain open-source and community-driven, but will get streamlined integration with Qualcomm's Dragonwing robotics platforms and Arduino boards.
• MoveIt has drawn code from over 560 contributors across 40 repositories, with 6,700 GitHub stars and its core research papers cited more than 1,700 times.
• The deal, announced at the ROSCon Toronto conference, is subject to customary closing conditions and did not disclose a purchase price.
• Qualcomm wants software to connect its Snapdragon and Dragonwing chips to real-world robotics applications, aiming to speed developers' path from AI models like VLAs and VLMs to physical robot control.
• By absorbing a trusted open-source steward rather than building from scratch, Qualcomm is betting that developer ecosystems, not just chip performance, will determine who wins in physical AI.