Samsung Acquires SmartThings Home Automation Platform

Samsung has acquired SmartThings, a company that makes several smart home automation products that work with iOS and Android apps.

Founder and CEO Alex Hawkinson announced the news in a blog post today. He said that SmartThings will operate as an independent company within Samsung’s Open Innovation Center group, so hopefully its compatibility with iOS will continue.

SmartThings had raised 1.2 million on Kickstarter and another $15.5 million from other sources. TechCrunch reports that it sold to Samsung for around $200 million.


You can read the full announcement below...

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Friends,

Today is a big day for SmartThings. I’m excited to announce that SmartThings has been acquired by Samsung and will operate as an independent company within Samsung’s Open Innovation Center group.

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.

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.

We’re tremendously excited about the possibilities ahead, and owe a heartfelt thank you to the people who have helped us get here: our amazing customers and supporters. To all of our earliest Kickstarter backers who believed in our vision; to our incredible investors and advisors, to our partners who have helped us spread the word, to our community of developers whose contributions continue to propel the open platform, to our all of our customers whose feedback, encouragement, and stories have driven us; and to our wonderful and growing team whose tireless work has helped propel us to where we are today: We cannot thank you enough.

Onward!
- Alex
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