Business · 23 Sept 2026 · Company announcement

Qualcomm agrees to buy PickNik, steward of open-source MoveIt

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Qualcomm says MoveIt will stay open-source and hardware-agnostic while gaining tighter integration with its Dragonwing robotics platforms and Arduino boards.

Qualcomm Technologies has agreed to acquire PickNik, the robotics software company that maintains MoveIt, a widely used open-source manipulation framework built on ROS. The announcement gives no price, and closing is subject to customary conditions, the company says.

Qualcomm says MoveIt 1 and MoveIt 2 will remain open-source under their existing licence and continue to support third-party hardware. MoveIt and PickNik's commercial MoveIt Pro are to be integrated more closely with Qualcomm's Dragonwing robotics platforms, starting on the Arduino side with VENTUNO Q boards.

The announcement came during ROSCon Toronto. PickNik chief executive Dave Grant said MoveIt was "entering an exciting new chapter".

Sources

Qualcomm (press release)
PickNik (news page) (secondary)

Written by the RankedRobot news desk (AI-assisted, human-reviewed) from the sources above; checked 2026-10-01. Claims are attributed to whoever makes them. Spotted an error? corrections@rankedrobot.com