Samsung buys SmartThings for $200 million

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SmartThings, a startup making smart-home controller, has been brought by Samsung. While the price has not been disclosed by the companies, it was said that around $200 million was paid by Samsung.

Alex Hawkinson, the founder and CEO of SmartThings would continue running it and operating it independently.

Most of the operations, including 55 employees in Minnesota, San Francisco and Washington DC would be moving to Palo Alto, Calif for becoming a part of OIC or Open Innovation Center of Samsung. This unit run by David Eun, former Google and AOL exec, has its focus on software and services innovation.

As an example, an app named Terrain was launched by the accelerator, through which a list of cards, providing shortcuts to social networks, content and information, settings on device and frequently accessed information is offered to the users.

In an interview today, it was said by Hawkinson that with this of Samsung, the efforts will be accelerated. He further says that ““I think at a high level, it has always been our vision to go really big. It’s just scale and reach all around the world — imagine reaching hundreds of millions of consumers and many more developers.”

SmartThings, is owned by a company Physical Graph Corp and it started as a Kickstarter project in the year 2012, just like Oculus VR, that was sold to Facebook for the price of $2 billion. Around $15 million has been raised in funding and investors include First Round Capital, Highland Capital and Greylock Partners.

Firstly, the possibility of purchase was reported by TechCrunch several weeks back, but it wasn’t completed yet. SmartThings has its focus on doing things such as connecting lights, locks as well as other home devices to mobile applications.

Hawkinson stated that the sales of SmartThings had been growing and more than 1,000 devices were being supported. Around 8,000 devices are created for the platform by around 5,000 developers.

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Anne-Marie Jackson

Anna grew up on a steady diet of 20th century literature, science-fiction movies and Viking lore. Unsurprisingly she turned into a technology geek with an inclination for history & fantasy.