Australian internet of things (IoT) company Buddy has announced an agreement to acquire LIFX, a provider of wifi-enabled LED bulbs that can be controlled by a mobile device or by voice operation.
Buddy, which has raised a total of $23.1 million in funding over seven rounds since 2012, provides data hosting and management solutions for manufacturers and vendors of connected (IoT) devices.
In announcing the deal with the San Francisco-based provider of smart lights, Buddy said the company believes that every occupied space – offices, homes, schools or cities – will use ‘smart’ technology to become more efficient and sustainable.
“We also believe as many others do, that intelligent lighting will be the foundation for such smart spaces,” it added.
At a company event in Sydney in March 2018, Buddy unveiled a program called Works with Ohm, which is designed to help broaden the types of meters and sensors that can transmit data to Buddy Ohm.
Over the past few months, Buddy has added LIFX to its Works with Ohm program to help make spaces smarter through lighting.
The acquisition is expected to bring a globally deployed energy and sensing platform in LIFX’s lights to Buddy’s Ohm energy monitoring product.
Since 2015, LIFX has sold nearly two million lights in over a hundred countries with revenues growing between 70 percent and 100 percent year on year. Since the company was established in 2012, LIFX has raised a total of $16.3M in funding over three rounds.
It generated A$38.5M (unaudited) in revenues in CY 2018, with A$3.4M in EBITDA and gross margins of 29 percent.
The two companies said in an official market announcement that each of LIFX’s products is capable of reporting their energy consumption, with the future opportunity to also act as a sensing platform for environmental and localized comfort monitoring, and more.
“Certain models of LIFX lights contain other sensors and hardware that may facilitate control by Buddy Ohm of lights, appliances, air conditioning and other consumers of energy in an occupied space,” it added.
The two companies also said that intelligent lighting would form the backbone of intelligent buildings (and is already the #1 connected device category to voice assistant technology such as Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple’s Siri).
In time, Buddy said it would introduce LIFX to new commercial markets and consider the opportunity to deploy the Buddy Ohm solution via existing installations of LIFX lights in residential spaces.
With the acquisition, LIFX’s Chief Technology and Product Officer, Marc Alexander will join the Buddy Board of Directors following completion of the deal.
