Any company can "go the way of Qualcomm", as you call it. To my knowledge, there's no indication that there's any more danger of them going that way relative to, say, TI or ST?

Don't get me wrong, the fall of Arduino is a real loss. Espressif is a company in the business of making money, while Arduino's mission was to build a robust tinkerer ecosystem. Absent an acquisition, it's probably fair to say that Arduino would be less likely than Espressif, ST or TI to do bullshit like this.