Qualcomm is acquiring PickNik Robotics, the Boulder-based company that maintains the widely used MoveIt open-source manipulation framework, the chipmaker announced on September 23, 2026. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
MoveIt Meets Dragonwing
Under Qualcomm's ownership, PickNik will fold its motion-planning, teleoperation and behavior-orchestration tools into Qualcomm's Dragonwing physical-AI platform, tightening the loop between silicon, foundation models and real-time manipulation. MoveIt Pro will run out of the box on Qualcomm's Arduino VENTUNO Q boards, and MoveIt 1 and 2 will remain open source under their existing licenses.
Executive Perspective
"PickNik has earned tremendous trust within the global robotics community through its stewardship of MoveIt and its commitment to open-source innovation," said Nakul Duggal, Qualcomm's EVP for automotive, industrial and cloud.
PickNik founder and chief product officer Dave Coleman added that the tie-up "will allow us to accelerate that mission, expand investment in MoveIt as a leading AI training platform for robotics and deliver even more value to developers while preserving the openness, community collaboration and cross-platform support" that has made MoveIt the default manipulation stack for ROS.
A Physical-AI Land Grab
The move fits Qualcomm's ongoing pivot from smartphone modems to edge AI and robotics silicon. It follows chip and platform pushes such as NVIDIA's Cosmos 3 Edge platform, D-Robotics' $400M Series C to build a humanoid brain, and Qualcomm's own Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 launch. Owning the MoveIt community gives Qualcomm both a distribution channel to ROS developers and a foothold in the manipulation-heavy corner of humanoid and industrial robotics.
Reporting based on coverage from The Robot Report, Robotics 24/7 and Qualcomm's investor communications.