Amazon.com, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Alexa Fund has poured its largest investment to date into the smart Wi-Fi connected thermostat, Ecobee, investing $35 million into the latter from its $100 million fund. The retail giant initially began the fund with the aim of encouraging developers to experiment with new services, making most of its hefty investments into hardware companies.
The Ecobee device hopes to provide users with a “simpler” experience for their connected smart homes. After Ecobee was founded earlier in 2007, the company has been working hard to roll out variants and services which work on conserving energy. Considering that the hardware company previously partnered up with Amazon following the launch of its Echo speaker, it is no surprise that Amazon has gone out of its way to contribute generously for Ecobee’s thermostat.
Settings for the future thermostat can be digitally programmed, enabling users to customize and set temperatures across the room. Users can also opt to set room temperatures higher or lower with voice-commands, thanks to Ecobee’s previous integration with Amazon’s Alexa.
Amazon’s debut of the Echo Bluetooth speaker in 2014 greatly helped to bolster the trend of smart-homes. Thanks to its complex voice-recognition capabilities, Echo’s advent also proved to be vital for the company’s virtual assistant, Alexa. Ever since Echo’s appearance in competitive markets, it has become apparent that the Bluetooth speaker and digital assistant have become Amazon’s biggest and most popular assets.
However, Amazon is not the only investor making rounds of investments into Ecobee. Other investors include Thomvest, and Relay Ventures, but no details regarding these other investments have been disclosed as yet.
According to Amazon’s vice-president for its Alexa division, Steve Rabuchin, the company’s decision was mainly powered by the fact that Ecobee’s role proved to be “instrumental” after it chose to help Amazon integrate its Ecobee3 with the Alexa Connected Home Skills API in February. Since Alexa responds to users’ requests and voice-commands after being activated with an “Alexa” prompt; Amazon hopes that its investment will help the company to further ramp up the number of “skills” that it offers to users of its Alexa-powered devices.
The Alexa Skills Kit is Amazon’s way of offering its customers exclusive features and access to third-party services simply through one device. Through this, users can order pizza, call a Uber, get weather updates, and much more. Furthermore, to trigger more demand for its popular virtual assistant, the retail giant has also expanded upon its line of Echo-inspired speakers, including the Amazon Tap and Dot devices.
Mr. Rabuchin claims that Amazon’s funding round has proven to be the company’s “largest single Alexa Fund investment to-date and builds on our existing relationship with Ecobee.”
We believe that Amazon’s determination to maintain good relations with Ecobee is also powered by the fact that the hardware company remains closely linked to Amazon’s tech rival, Apple Inc. Venture Beat reports that Ecobee remains functional on Apple’s smart-home platform, HomeKit, giving it the advantage of being the only product that can be controlled on Apple’s platform through its own virtual assistant, Siri.
Therefore, it is essential for Amazon to remain in Ecobee’s good books considering that other tech rivals like Google are also working hard to come up with their own versions of smart-home controllers and assistants, raising possibilities that Ecobee may soon emerge on their platforms as well.
Amazon’s determination to ensure that its virtual assistant and Bluetooth speakers remain top choices in markets requires it to remain involved with Ecobee’s work. The retail giant claims that this will not be an issue considering that the company remains impressed with the type of “innovative smart home technologies” that Ecobee works with; a major factor that keeps Amazon intrigued with other devices Ecobee has to offer. Following Amazon’s investment, we believe that Ecobee will have no problem in considering further integrations with Alexa in the subsequent future to help give Alexa a distinctive edge over its opponents.
