The smart thermostat maker has been granted $35mn of funding for developing more smarter and connected home products and technologies.
It’s raining funds in the IoT and M2M space–companies and investors are not shying away from funding IoT dreams of entrepreneurial as well as evolving IoT firms. Ecobee, a home automation company, is the latest to grab attention of investors this time. Amazon, Thomvest and Relay Venture have together committed a capital of $35mn towards Ecobee.
Ecobee, which has the world’s first Wi-Fi connected smart thermostat to its credit, aims to leverage this capital for developing smarter and connected home products and technologies that can simplify people’s lives. There is every probability that these products and technologies would be voice-based as Amazon has granted Alexa fund to Ecobee, which is granted to companies fuelling voice technology innovation.
Ecobee’s association with Amazon begun early this year when the company announced Ecobee3, its smarter wi-fi thermostat with room sensors that was directly compatible with Amazon Echo. Here compatibility implied that users can pair Ecobee3 theromstat with Amazon Echo Amazon’s, and use cloud-based voice service Alexa to give commands to the thermostat.
While elaborating on the reasons for investing in Ecobee, Amazon’s vice president for Alexa division Steve Rabuchin said, “We’ve been impressed with Ecobee’s innovative smart home technologies and their ability to improve the everyday lives of homeowners. We’re excited to see what the future holds for this growing company and the new voice experiences they’ll bring to Amazon Alexa customers.”
