Arduino has opened pre-orders for the VENTUNO Q, an edge AI development platform powered by Qualcomm's Dragonwing IQ8 Series. The board combines up to 40 TOPS of AI performance with real-time microcontroller control, targeting robotics, industrial automation, and machine vision applications that need to act on data without cloud connectivity.
The platform's main processor, Qualcomm's Dragonwing IQ-8275, is paired with 16GB of LPDDR5 memory and 64GB of eMMC storage, with support for expandable M.2 NVMe storage. A separate STM32H5 microcontroller handles deterministic real-time tasks such as motor control, CAN-FD communications, PWM, and high-speed GPIO.
VENTUNO Q ships with Ubuntu pre-installed and supports Arduino App Lab, Visual Studio Code, native Linux tools, and the Arduino Core running on Zephyr RTOS for time-sensitive control applications. Through App Lab, developers can access NPU-optimized AI models covering LLMs, vision-language models, speech recognition, object detection, and gesture recognition. They can also deploy their own GGUF-format models from Hugging Face or build custom models in Edge Impulse Studio. Qualcomm's open-source GenieX runtime handles on-device generative AI.
"With VENTUNO Q, we are giving developers, educators and innovators the tools to build machines that don't just think, but do," said Fabio Violante, VP & GM, Arduino, Qualcomm Technologies.
From prototype to production
Arduino has outlined a path from development boards to commercial hardware. Once a design is ready for production, the same Dragonwing IQ8 processor will be available in system-on-module (SOM) formats from hardware partners, letting developers keep their existing software, AI models, and application logic.
SECO and Toradex are among the first participants in the "Works with Arduino" programme, which aims to simplify the move from prototype to production-ready systems. Nakul Duggal, EVP and Group GM, Automotive, Industrial and Embedded IoT at Qualcomm Technologies, said, "The Dragonwing IQ8 Series is designed to support early development through commercial deployment. The 'Works with Arduino' program gives developers and partners a practical way to bring innovations built on Dragonwing IQ8 into commercial products, helping accelerate development and commercialization across our ecosystem."
Potential use cases include autonomous mobile robots, predictive maintenance systems, quality inspection, and STEM education. For software developers new to embedded AI, the AI Learning Path for Software Developers covers the core skills needed to build and deploy models on devices like this.
Pricing and availability
VENTUNO Q is available for pre-order through the Arduino Store and authorised distributors including DigiKey, Farnell, Mouser, RS, and Robu.in. Arduino has not disclosed pricing.
Why this matters for IT and development professionals
The VENTUNO Q sits in a growing gap between general-purpose single-board computers and high-end industrial AI systems. For developers, the significance is the combination of a 40-TOPS NPU with a separate real-time MCU on one board - you can run a vision model and control a motor in the same application without juggling two separate systems or managing a cloud round-trip. The SOM upgrade path also means prototypes can move into production without a rewrite. If you work in robotics, industrial automation, or edge AI, this is a board worth testing against your existing workflow. For those still building those skills, the AI for IT & Development resources cover the model deployment and integration patterns that apply across edge platforms.
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