Qualcomm to acquire PickNik, steward of open-source MoveIt

Qualcomm Technologies has agreed to acquire PickNik, the longtime steward of MoveIt, one of the most widely used open-source frameworks for robot manipulation. MoveIt, built on the Robot Operating System (ROS), provides motion planning, manipulation, perception and kinematics, and is used across industrial automation, service robotics, mobile manipulation and emerging physical AI applications. Qualcomm says the framework will remain open source under its existing license, with community-driven roadmaps and support for third-party hardware, while the transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions.

Qualcomm plans to integrate MoveIt and PickNik's commercial MoveIt Pro platform more closely with its Dragonwing robotics platforms, connecting AI models including vision-language-action and vision-language models with motion planning, manipulation and real-time robot control. Integration is also planned for Arduino VENTUNO Q boards, extending MoveIt's motion planning and autonomy capabilities to Arduino developers. Both companies are founding members of the Open Source Robotics Alliance and say they will continue supporting open-source development of MoveIt and ROS.