Qualcomm enhances AI and IoT capabilities through Edge Impulse acquisition

Qualcomm Technologies made a significant announcement at Embedded World by revealing its plans to acquire EdgeImpulse Inc., a move that is set to bolster its offerings for developers and strengthen its position in the realms of AI and IoT. This strategic acquisition is expected to align seamlessly with Qualcomm Technologies’ IoT transformation strategy, which encompasses a holistic approach involving a chipset roadmap, unified software architecture, developer resources, and a range of services and solutions tailored to meet the evolving needs of various industries.

The integration of AI into IoT systems has gained considerable traction due to its ability to streamline workflows, enhance data analysis, and drive smarter decision-making processes. By leveraging AI and edge computing technologies, enterprises can achieve heightened operational efficiency and flexibility. Qualcomm Technologies is well-equipped to capitalize on this trend, given its pivotal role in driving industrial transformation through IoT and edge AI solutions.

Over the past year, Qualcomm Technologies has fine-tuned its strategy to cater to diverse IoT segments, offering integrated solutions that encompass hardware, software, and services designed to cater to a wide array of verticals such as consumer electronics, healthcare, security, retail, energy, and enterprise applications.

Edge Impulse’s edge AI platform has empowered a vast community of developers, enabling them to effortlessly create, deploy, and monitor AI models on a variety of edge devices. With support for multiple microcontrollers and processors equipped with AI accelerators, the platform provides a comprehensive suite of tools for data processing, model training, deployment, and monitoring—all through an intuitive interface that requires minimal coding expertise.

Qualcomm Technologies envisions empowering developers on the Edge Impulse platform to target its Dragonwing™ processors, renowned for their superior on-device AI inferencing, computer vision capabilities, and processing power. By integrating with the Qualcomm® AI Hub, developers can optimize the performance of AI models on Qualcomm Technologies’ platforms, achieving up to a fourfold increase in inference performance, along with reductions in model size and memory usage. Edge Impulse’s current support for Dragonwing QCS6490 and QCS5430 processors is set to expand to include additional Dragonwing processors tailored for industrial and embedded IoT applications.