Aurelia Sunset SA

Community General Discussion
1

Since I haven't received answers to my questions, and I understand I never will, I did some research.

After Qualcomm's acquisition of Arduino, it is now "pretty clear" that the Arduino company no longer exists; Arduino has become a division of Qualcomm.

There is a huge difference between an Arduino that remained a legally independent company, even if its owner is Qualcomm, and an Arduino that was dissolved into Qualcomm.

My sources of legal and free information:
moneyhouse.ch
papers.ch
business-monitor.ch

There have been very old companies in the Arduino galaxy, such as Smart Project.

The oldest one I found with reliable information is:

BMCI
Founded in 2013, its activity: design, develop, manufacture, assemble, test, and distribute electronics.

Then, with the reconciliation that followed the Banzi vs. Musto civil war, there was:

Arduino SA
Two phases must be distinguished:

Phase 1
from June 27, 2018 to October 14 2025
Resumption of activities of BMCI and Arduino LLC (no information available; I am not aware of a papers.ch equivalent for the USA).

Phase 2
from October 14, 2025 to October 31, 2025 (only 17 days)
Change of activity, transformed into a financial asset management structure.

Currently:
Aurelia Sunset SA
Decision of October 31, 2025
Registered on: November 4, 2025
Resumption of the "new financial activities" of Arduino SA,
The board of directors remains unchanged from that of Arduino SA, with "former" Arduino (Banzi, Violente), a representative from ARM, one from Renesas, patent specialists, and investor representatives.

Therefore, unless I have missed some information, there is no longer a company with the name Arduino.
This is different from the equity investments of ARM and Renesas.
It is not known whether former Arduino employees hold positions of responsibility in the new structure.

Wait and see, or as Arduino is an italian project : Solo il tempo potrà dirlo.

Qualcomm is already being accused of "ruining" Arduino
2

I struggle to understand why any of this matters. For years now, the true value of Arduino has been the ecosystem and community that grew up around the base hardware/software and expanded on it.

In addition to Arduino we have

  • M5Stack
  • Adafruit
  • LilyGo
  • SeeedStudio
  • Sparkfun
  • Raspberry Pi organization (Pico board is Arduino compatible)

And many more who make arduino-compatible hardware, not to mention the thousands of open-source libraries.

So tell me again why everyone is handwringing over Arduino being acquired by Qualcomm?

2 Likes
3

If you are interested in this sort of "archeology" then there is also shab.ch, the official Swiss trade register which is free. There, Arduino goes back to 2011.
What did you find in papers.ch ? It appears to be a software engineering outfit.

4

I'm just providing information. I'm not looking for controversy.

What interests me is the survival of this forum.

There have already been acquisitions of stakes in Arduino.
The first one, by ARM, strongly resembled a purchase, but on the one hand, there was no proof, and on the other hand, Arduino remained an independent company.

Here, there's a 90% chance that the Arduino company itself would disappear.
That's fundamentally different, and we can certainly question the consequences.

There's no need to worry about the "so-called" Arduino functions; they are actually Wiring functions. :grinning_face:
Regardless of the microcontroller, digitalWrite exists, only the function code needs to be adapted to each microcontroller.
There are several IDEs; the one offered by Arduino is simple, but it's not the best.

Everyone should remember what happened when Oracle bought Sun and Oracle's attacks against open source.

5

Tomorrow's history will depend on yesterday's history.

Understanding yesterday's history helps us understand the history of the present moment.

6

You don't buy a brand name to get rid of the brand (unless when it's a competitor - but here it would be quite far fetched to say Arduino was competing with Qualcom).

Sure, the company can disappear, it happens in mergers, but the name can survive as a trademark if it carries value (which it does in this case - that's what they bought) and the forum could still exist if they are interested in maintaining a link with makers and tinkerers...

Well, there are other forums as well.... But I like it here indeed :)

1 Like
7

Without a doubt: this forum is the best! :grinning_face:

What I mean, having been in a similar situation, is that there's a huge difference between remaining a legally independent company even after being acquired, and being completely integrated into the acquiring company.

In the first case, the company (Arduino) retains its autonomy, in the second, everything is dictated by the buyer.

In the second case, Qualcomm only needs to promote a small number of Arduino executives to overcome any obstacles (I've experienced this firsthand), and in less than three years, only the name "Arduino" will remain.
And if that's Qualcomm's choice, Arduino could become nothing more than an online sales platform for Qualcomm products.
That would be sad.