Samsung Acquires Home Automation Startup SmartThings For $200 Million

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Today, Samsung announced that it has acquired home automation startup SmartThings. While neither Samsung or SmartThings revealed the financial details about the acquisition, Re/code reports that the Korean tech giant paid $200 million for the startup. 

In a blog post, SmartThings CEO Alex Hawkinson said:

“It has always been our goal to create a totally open smart home platform that brings together third-party developers, device makers, and consumers. We’re thrilled that Samsung fully supports this vision.

We will continue to run SmartThings the way we always have: by embracing our community of customers, developers, and device makers and championing the creation of the leading open platform for the smart home. Our growing team will remain fully intact and will relocate to a new headquarters in Palo Alto, CA. In short: SmartThings will remain SmartThings.”

The company’s CEO confirmed that the company will remain independent of Samsung, at least for the foreseeable future.

According to the report from Re/code, the company will relocate to Palo Alto and become a part of the Samsung Open Innovation Center. 

SmartThings is a 2-year-old startup that employs 55 employees and was founded to eliminate the current confusion in home automation standards. The company currently sells a $99 hub that allows variance home appliances to communicate with each other even if they use different software standards. 

Over the past year we have seen home automation grow in popularity. Various tech companies, like Apple with HomeKit and Google’s acquisition of Nest, have already started to show some interest in home automation. 

What do you think of the current state of home automation and what would you like to see in the future? Let us know in the comments below. 

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