Today, we are excited to share that Avnet and Arduino announced a global partnership to support equipment manufacturers and machine builders in moving toward a more modular future. The new agreement combines the strength of Avnet’s worldwide embedded design services and distribution support with Arduino’s robust embedded technology ecosystem of hardware and software.
Many of you may already know Avnet as the parent company of Hackster and Element 14. Avnet also includes several significant global technology distributors and solution providers serving individuals and businesses worldwide. Both companies decided to partner after seeing a global trend of professional customers moving towards modular boards over custom chip-down designs to accelerate product development.
The use of Arduino products among professional engineers has grown significantly over the last few years since Arduino PRO was introduced. From workbench prototyping to volume production, business customers report development time drops between 20% and 50% from incorporating Arduino software, firmware libraries, and microcontroller modules. This efficiency increase is one reason we are seeing an encouraging trend among enterprises to adopt open-source embedded technology.
“Design engineers will be able to quickly move from initial prototype and preproduction to high volume designs through Arduino’s open-source software and open hardware design approach,” said Alex Iuorio, senior vice president of Supplier Development at Avnet. “Not every customer has the time, resources, or capability to perform a chip-down design, which often is a manual, hands-on process to design, engineer, prototype, source and produce. Using Arduino’s PRO product line offerings and Avnet’s support will greatly reduce time to market.”
To support the shift to open modular design in product development, Arduino will be offering several engineer evaluation kits exclusively through Avnet. The evaluation kits target use cases in predictive maintenance, environmental sensing, robotics, vision, and industrial gateways integrating AI on the edge. Each kit provides a path for businesses to experience the benefits of Arduino in product development for commercial applications.
“We see an engineering mega-trend moving away from chip-down design and a greater reliance on modules like the Arduino PRO boards,” added Arduino CEO Fabio Violante. “Our new global distribution agreement with Avnet will allow even more design engineers to be an early adopter of this trend.”
While there is an emphasis on supporting businesses in adopting open hardware, both companies are committed to creators at every level. We are excited to see what will come as the partnership launches and the developer communities grow together.
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