Qualcomm has acquired the AI platform Edge Impulse, known for aiding developers in creating machine learning solutions. The acquisition aims to enhance Qualcomm’s machine learning software capabilities, particularly for its Dragonwing line of AI-powered chips.
Nakul Duggal, Qualcomm’s head of IoT, stated that the acquisition will reinforce the company’s “leadership in AI” and support critical sectors such as retail, security, energy and utilities, supply chain management, and asset management.
As part of the agreement, Edge Impulse will integrate its operations with Qualcomm but will retain its own offices, employees, and website. Edge Impulse co-founder and CEO Zach Shelby remarked, “Our team and mission remain the same, only now, we will have even more opportunities and capabilities to accelerate what we do best.”
Zach Shelby, an engineer and entrepreneur from Finland, founded Edge Impulse in 2019 with co-founder Jan Jongboom from the Netherlands. The duo previously worked together on IoT systems at the British chip company Arm. They developed a platform that significantly reduces the time required to build machine learning models for small devices including sensors, microcontrollers, and cameras.
In a blog post, Shelby highlighted a significant market opportunity, saying, “Recognising that the compute capabilities of microcontrollers had grown to the point where they were able to run domain-specific AI models directly onboard, we realised there were an endless number of use cases that would benefit from moving AI from the cloud to the edge.”
To date, Edge Impulse has raised $54.3 million in funding. In 2021, it secured $34 million in Series B funding at a valuation of $234 million. Two years later, the company reported revenues of $14.7 million. Its platform currently serves over 170,000 developers who use it to create, deploy, and monitor AI models at the edge.
Shelby attributed the platform’s popularity to its ability to help developers avoid tedious tasks in setting up AI for edge devices. “Edge Impulse gives developers a tool that automates data collection, simplifies model training, provides advanced optimisation tools, and offers one-click deployment to many types of hardware, from MCUs to CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs,” he stated.
Featured image credit: Qualcomm & Edge Impulse
