Samsung has acquired SmartThings, a smart-home-oriented startup, for a fee believed to be in the region of $200 million ( £120 million / â©204 billion).
Currently spread out in offices in Washington, D.C., Minnesota and San Francisco, SmartThings will relocate to Palo Alto, California to become a part of Samsung’s Open Innovation Centre. CEO and Founder Alex Hawkinson will remain in full control.
SmartThings began life as a KickStarter, amassing $1,209,423 from 5,694 over the duration of its campaign. It has since gone on to garner over $15 million in funding, including investment from some big names in the business world such as First Round Capital, Highland Capital and Greylock Partners.
Hawkinson said in a statement on the SmartThings blog: “We believe that there is an enormous opportunity to leverage Samsung’s global scale to help us realize our long-term vision.
“While we will remain operationally independent, joining forces with Samsung will enable us to support all of the leading smartphone vendors, devices, and applications; expand our base of developers and enhance the tools and programs that they rely on; and help many more people around the world easily control and monitor their homes using SmartThings.”
Not just capable of letting you dim the lights and adjust the thermostat of your home, SmartThings connected network allows you to monitor just about everything in your home, from knowing when the hob is on to when the front door’s unlocked to when the curtains in the living room are open.
You can buy SmartThings connected devices right now from its official web store, with a variety of starter kits and add-ons available.
With Google already having captured home-automation industry forerunner Nest earlier this year for $3.2 billion, this purchase by Samsung shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. It’s got its work cut out if it hopes to make a serious impact on the Western market, though. Still, with a name as big as Samsung behind it there’s no telling what SmartThings could achieve.