Axelera AI – a leading edge-inference company – and Arduino, the global leader in open-source hardware and software, today announced a strategic partnership to make high-performance AI at the edge more accessible than ever, building advanced technology solutions based on inference and an open ecosystem. This furthers Axelera AI’s strategy to democratize artificial intelligence everywhere.
The collaboration will combine the strengths of Axelera AI’s Metis™ AI Platform with the powerful SOMs from the Arduino Pro range to provide customers with easy-to-use hardware and software to innovate around AI. Users will enjoy the freedom to dictate their own AI journey, thanks to tools that provide unique digital in-memory computing and RISC-V controlled dataflow technology, delivering high performance and usability at a fraction of the cost and power of other solutions available today.
Showcasing AI-Powered Industrial Monitoring at CES 2025
The first outcome of this partnership will be an innovative solution that will integrate AI technology and the Portenta X8, running an offline pre-trained LLM (Phi-3) to power an AI-driven industrial monitoring system capable of processing and analyzing sensor data (temperature, humidity, air quality, CO2, etc.) from different locations and manufacturing machines, to identify trends and potential issues in real time: a demo will be showcased live at CES, January 7-10, 2025 in Las Vegas, NV at the EIC Pavillion (Tech West, Venetian Expo, Level 1, Hall G – Booth #60633 – Eureka Park).
Investing in AI with an Open Approach
As we approach 2025, investments in AI are only expected to increase. IDC recently forecasted that worldwide spending on technology to support AI strategies will reach $337 billion in the upcoming year. The estimate is likely to more than double to $749 billion by 2028 as organizations explore new and innovative use cases such as generative AI and agentic AI – an emerging trend, expected to pick up steam in 2025, that employs autonomous machine “agents” that move beyond query-and-response generative chatbots to accomplish enterprise-level tasks without human guidance. The open approach that Axelera AI and Arduino are taking to bring high-performance inference solutions to the edge will enable these and many other use cases globally.
Extending the Opportunities for Open-Source Innovation
Arduino’s open-source solutions are trusted by many Fortune 500 companies and extensively used by makers, educators, and engineers all over the world, aiming to discover what comes next in their fields of interest. This partnership allows a 33-million-strong community of creative thinkers already working with Arduino to have access to Axelera AI’s innovative AI acceleration platform, to transform AI technologies and unlock new possibilities for AI that have yet to be realized.
“Axelera AI was founded with a vision to democratize AI by offering fast, easy-to-access AI technology that minimizes power consumption and cost,” said Fabrizio Del Maffeo, CEO and Co-Founder at Axelera AI. “This is critical for companies to realize true AI innovation. Another important step to democratizing AI is building an ecosystem of collaborators all striving to achieve that same goal. We cannot wait to see what the Arduino community will create through this partnership.”
A New Vision for AI Accessibility, Based on Collaboration
The partnership is an important step toward developing an AI ecosystem of partners all aligned on the vision to reduce barriers around the most advanced and powerful technologies today. To realize this multi-billion-dollar opportunity requires skillsets from a wide range of disciplines, including builders, enablers, co-creators, and developers. This ecosystem is essential to harness the true power of AI, and to enable the AI innovation of tomorrow, unlocking AI imagination across key vertical markets such as automotive, digital healthcare, high performance computing, Industry 4.0, retail, robots & drones, visual security and more.
“This partnership exemplifies Arduino’s mission to enable innovators with powerful, accessible tools that bridge creativity and real-world problem-solving,” said Fabio Violante, CEO at Arduino. “By working with Axelera AI, we’re providing developers and businesses the means to integrate advanced AI capabilities into their projects, opening the door to groundbreaking innovations across industries. It’s exciting to see how this collaboration will empower our community and beyond to turn bold ideas into impactful solutions.”
Discover More!
Will you be at CES 2025? If so, set up a meeting with Axelera AI to see a demo and learn about how this collaboration with Arduino aims to unlock the full power of Edge AI. You can book a meeting here: https://www.axelera.ai/visit-axelera-ai-at-ces-2025.
As the Arduino partnership products become ready, they will join the Axelera AI portfolio available for purchase on the our Webshop: https://store.axelera.ai/
