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Qualcomm agrees to acquire PickNik, commits to keeping MoveIt open source

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Qualcomm Technologies has agreed to acquire robotics software company PickNik, which has long maintained the open-source robot manipulation framework MoveIt. The transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions and has not yet been completed. Qualcomm said MoveIt will retain its existing open-source license, community-driven roadmap, and support for third-party hardware; the company plans to integrate MoveIt and PickNik's commercial MoveIt Pro more tightly with its Dragonwing robotics platform, connecting vision-language-action models with motion planning, manipulation, and real-time control. The two parties are demonstrating MoveIt Pro running on the VENTUNO Q and Dragonwing platforms at ROSCon in Toronto. MoveIt is widely used for robot manipulation, and whether its open-source nature and third-party hardware support can continue is key to the impact of this acquisition on existing users.