The problem is that there just isn't a whole lot of money to be made in providing hobby hardware for enthusiasts. Every time a big player gets involved, they think they can change this. A decade ago, Intel tried that back in the day with Galileo / Edison, and tellingly, they came up with the same "ideas": IoT / AI.
If you're doing cheap IoT trinkets, you're never going to pay extra for a brand. You're going to buy the cheapest wifi / BT chipset out there and make do with that.
And if you're doing serious AI, you basically go for a real computer with real computing power, and in that segment, the Arduino brand means nothing.
I suspect there was an internal deck saying how this acquisition is going to give them foothold in the hobby community, but if they wanted that, there's a million better ways. Starting with making documentation, SDKs, and toolchains accessible and easy to use. There's a reason why you see Microchip, STM, RPi, and Espressif chips in every other DIY project.
If you're doing cheap IoT trinkets, you're never going to pay extra for a brand. You're going to buy the cheapest wifi / BT chipset out there and make do with that.
And if you're doing serious AI, you basically go for a real computer with real computing power, and in that segment, the Arduino brand means nothing.
I suspect there was an internal deck saying how this acquisition is going to give them foothold in the hobby community, but if they wanted that, there's a million better ways. Starting with making documentation, SDKs, and toolchains accessible and easy to use. There's a reason why you see Microchip, STM, RPi, and Espressif chips in every other DIY project.