Qualcomm to acquire PickNik Robotics and keep MoveIt open-source
Qualcomm will integrate its Dragonwing platform with PickNik’s MoveIt framework. today said it has agreed to acquire PickNik Inc., which has developed robotics software including the MoveIt open-source manipulation framework.
The companies said they expect to streamline MoveIt integration with Qualcomm Dragonwing platforms to give developers an easier path from AI models to planning, manipulation, and real-time control. “Since our founding, PickNik’s mission has been to provide industries with a powerful, open platform that accelerates innovation and development of advanced robotics, well beyond traditional factories,” stated Dave Coleman, founder and chief product officer at PickNik. “Joining Qualcomm Technologies 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 have always been central to our approach,” he said. PickNik advanced robotic manipulation with MoveIt Founded in 2015, PickNik worked on the Amazon Picking Challenge and landed Google as its first customer. The Boulder, Colo.-based company‘s team had begun work on MoveIt as part of the Robot Operating System (ROS) project at Willow Garage. In 2024, PickNik rebranded MoveIt Studio to MoveIt Pro to reflect its maturation into a professional-grade system with advanced runtime, decision-making, and orchestration capabilities. This year, the company partnered with Motiv Space Systems to develop software for NASA’s Fly Foundational Robotics mission. It also released MoveIt Pro 9.0, which includes enhanced perception-to-motion capabilities, redesigned teleoperation, and a training data collection system. Qualcomm provides tools for commercializing robots San Diego-based Qualcomm provides Snapdragon processors, wireless system-on-chip (SoC) modems, and Internet of Things (IoT) platforms. In January 2026, the company introduced a general-purpose architecture stack to integrate hardware, software, and AI. Qualcomm said it supports vision-language models (VLMs) and vision-language-action models (VLAs). In April, Qualcomm joined MassRobotics to offer Dragonwing to support resident startups. The company said its acquisition of PickNik strengthens its “commitment to fostering an open robotics ecosystem, providing developers with the tools, software, and frameworks needed to move more efficiently from research and experimentation to prototyping, deployment, and production at scale.” “Robotics is one of the most exciting frontiers of physical AI, and software is the connective tissue that turns great hardware into great robots,” said Nakul Duggal, executive vice president and group general manager for automotive, industrial and embedded IoT, and robotics at Qualcomm. “PickNik has earned tremendous trust within the global robotics community through its stewardship of MoveIt and its commitment to open-source innovation,” he added. “Together, we plan to make it easier for developers to build advanced robotic applications on Dragonwing robotics platforms while continuing to support the openness and collaboration that have made MoveIt successful.” Qualcomm to continue open-source support Developers, students, researchers, and commercial robotics organizations worldwide have used MoveIt to build robotics applications on top of ROS for applications including industrial automation, service robotics, mobile manipulation, and emerging physical AI systems.
