Qualcomm announced plans to acquire Edge Impulse Inc. for its AI end-to-end software to support Qualcomm’s IoT offerings including new Dragonwing processors, architecture, services and partnerships.
Edge Impulse already supports Dragonwing QCS6490 and QCS5430 processors and is scheduled to add support for additional Dragonwings for industrial and embedded IoT, Qualcomm said in a statement released Monday ahead of Embedded World in Germany.
Terms of the acquisition were not announced. Edge Impulse was founded in 2019 and has more than 70 employees, working with $54 million in funding out of a headquarters in San Jose, CA. Its website describes the company as offering AI for any edge device, including sensors and cameras, gateways, NPUs, CPUs and GPUs. Its software can be used to build datasets, train models and optimize libraries to run on devices.
Qualcomm said developers will be able to use Edge Impulse software to build applications for asset tracking and monitoring, manufacturing, anomaly detection and predictive maintenance systems by making use of AI with computer vision, audio and speech recognition. Dragonwing processors feature on-device AI inferencing, computer vision, graphics and processing and can be integrated with Qualcomm AI Hub for better inference performance with a reduced model size and memory.
Edge IoT applications will be important for many verticals such as security, healthcare, retail, energy and enterprise, Qualcomm said. “IoT opens the door for a myriad of opportunities and success about building real-world solutions, enabling developers and enterprises with AI capabilities to extract intelligence from data and providing them with tools to build the applications and services that will power the digital transformation of industries,” said Nakul Duggal, group general manager for automotive, industrial, embedded Iot and cloud computing at Qualcomm.
At Embedded World in Nuremberg, Germany, Qualcomm said it will feature 50 different partners and will have 90 modules from various partners displayed on a massive wall. Demos will be offered at Qualcomm’s Embedded World booth in hall 5, #5-161 from March 11 to 13.