Edge Impulse, a TNW community member that produces an AI platform for developers, has been acquired by American chip giant Qualcomm for an undisclosed sum.Qualcomm said it had bought Edge Impulse to boost its machine learning software capabilities, particularly for its Dragonwing line of AI-powered chips.Nakul Duggal, Qualcomms head of IoT, said the acquisition would strengthen his firms leadership in AI and bolstercritical sectors such as retail, security, energy and utilities, supply chain management, and asset management.Under the deal, Edge Impulse will integrate its operations with Qualcomms, but maintain its own offices, employees, and website.Check It OutOur team and mission remain the same, only now, we will have even more opportunities and capabilities to accelerate what we do best, said Zach Shelby, Edge Impulses co-founder and CEO.Shelby, an engineer and entrepreneur from Finland, founded Edge Impulse in 2019 alongside Dutchman Jan Jongboom. The pair met while working on IoT systems at British chip firm Arm.At Edge Impulse, Shelby and Jongboom built a platform the slashesthe time it takes to create machine learning models for small devices such as sensors, microcontrollers, and cameras.Shelby said the team had identified a big gap in the market.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, he wrote in a blog post.Edge Impulse has raised $54.3mn to date. In 2021, the company bagged $34mn in SeriesB funding at a valuation of $234mn. Two years later, it reported revenues of $14.7mn. Its platform is currently used by over 170,000 developers to create, deploy, and monitor AI models on the edge.Shelby credited the platforms popularity to helping developerseliminate laborious and manual tasks when setting up AI in edge devices.Edge Impulsegives 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 said.The Next in Tech is one of three key themes atTNW Conference, which takes place on June 19-20 in Amsterdam. Tickets for the event arenow on sale. To get 30% off, use the code TNWXMEDIA2025 at the check-out. Story by Sin Geschwindt Sin is a climate and energy reporter at TNW. From nuclear fusion to escooters, he covers the length and breadth of Europe's clean tech ecos (show all) Sin is a climate and energy reporter at TNW. From nuclear fusion to escooters, he covers the length and breadth of Europe's clean tech ecosystem. He's happiest sourcing a scoop, investigating the impact of emerging technologies, and even putting them to the test. Sin has five years journalism experience and holds a dual degree in media and environmental science from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Get the TNW newsletterGet the most important tech news in your inbox each week.Also tagged with