LG has acquired an 80 % stake in Athom, a Netherlands-based sensible house platform firm, with plans to buy the remaining 20 % inside three years.
The acquisition will combine Athom’s intensive connectivity capabilities, which hyperlink 1000’s of home equipment, sensors, and lighting gadgets, with LG’s generative AI-enabled ThinQ platform. This mixture is anticipated to create an AI house that delivers personalised environments tailor-made to buyer preferences.
“The acquisition of Athom is a cornerstone for our AI home based business,” mentioned Jung Ki-hyun, government vp and head of LG’s Platform Enterprise Heart.
“By leveraging the synergy between the 2 firms, we’ll develop our open ecosystem and exterior integration providers, aiming to supply prospects with extra numerous and multidimensional house experiences.”
Athom, based in 2014, is thought for its sensible house hub ‘Homey,’ which has gained a loyal buyer base of lots of of 1000’s of customers, primarily in Europe. The corporate’s flagship product, Homey Professional, can hook up with greater than 50,000 gadgets and helps numerous connection strategies, together with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Z-Wave, Matter, and Thread.
The Homey App Retailer presents round 1,000 purposes for connecting and controlling house gadgets from numerous manufacturers. Many of those purposes are based mostly on official partnerships, whereas others are developed by the energetic Homey group.
LG plans to leverage this acquisition to include third-party gadgets and providers into its ecosystem, offering deeper insights into buyer utilization patterns and accelerating the supply of personalised providers. Regardless of the acquisition, Athom will proceed to function independently—sustaining its enterprise operations and branding.
This transfer aligns with LG’s broader technique of transitioning from a hardware-focused to a software-based platform enterprise. The corporate goals to ascertain steady relationships with prospects by means of gadgets linked to the AI house, reworking right into a ‘Good Life Answer Firm’ that gives differentiated worth.
William Cho, CEO of LG Electronics, commented: “LG is evolving into an clever house options firm that connects and expands experiences in numerous residing areas.
“We are going to proceed to make strategic investments to shift our enterprise paradigm, as evidenced by our successive entries into platform-based equipment providers and options such because the webOS promoting platform and AI house.”
The worldwide sensible house market is projected to develop from $81.2 billion in 2023 to $260.24 billion by 2028, with a median annual development charge of 26.23 %, in line with market analysis agency TechNavio.
(Picture Credit score: LG)
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