Nanoleaf bets its future on robots, pink gentle remedy, and AI

Sensible lighting firm Nanoleaf has been unusually quiet lately. Whereas opponents akin to Govee and Philips Hue have been pumping out new products and innovative features at a formidable tempo, Nanoleaf has launched only a handful of smart lighting products within the final two years. There’s a purpose for this lull — the corporate has been going by means of a “brand evolution” centered on wellness, robotics, and, after all, AI.

“The sensible house is getting type of boring,” says the ever-candid Gimmy Chu, CEO and cofounder of Nanoleaf, which he now doesn’t need me to name a wise lighting firm. “Our model must evolve to include a number of the different merchandise that we’re going to be releasing.”

Nanoleaf is greatest recognized for its customizable, interactive RGB lighting ecosystem, with merchandise like its modular lighting panels and software program that mirrors lights to what’s in your laptop or television screen. It was an early adopter of Thread and Matterand its sensible bulb was one of many first Thread merchandise to work with Apple’s HomePod Mini when it launched in 2020.

However Chu says open requirements like Matter are resulting in the commodification of sensible lighting — as evidenced by firms like Ikea selling full-color smart lightbulbs for around $10 that work with each platform. That is one thing he and others predicted when Matter launched nearly four years ago.

Chu sees generative AI as the following wave of innovation. For Nanoleaf the tech firm, which means a concentrate on embodied AI, the place the know-how can exist in and work together with the true world. “It’s placing intelligence into {hardware} that really does one thing helpful,” says Chu, not simply placing ChatGPT in audio system. “AI is a large buzzword proper now, but it surely’s a transformative know-how that may change the way in which that every little thing works, together with the merchandise that we develop.”

Whereas he’s coy about specifics, he says they’ve no less than three merchandise launching this yr round embodied AI. Photographs he shared present that these shall be some form of AI-powered toy, a desk companion, and a robotic microcontroller.

A blog post on the corporate’s website explains the way it plans to make use of AI in “personalised and impactful” methods to simplify every day residing and improve creativity and studying, but it surely provides no concrete particulars about what it will truly seem like. Chu would solely share that one product is expounded to early childhood growth. He additionally stated that robotics shall be a giant a part of the corporate’s future, however that it’ll take some time to get there.

The opposite pivot is towards wellness merchandise. Nanoleaf launched a red light therapy mask in 2025which Chu says has develop into one of many firm’s top-selling merchandise. It has since added a red light therapy panel and wandand can launch 4 new pink gentle remedy units to deal with your face and physique this yr. These will “embody heating, and therapeutic massage/vibration settings,” says Chu.

Like a lot of the wellness gadget market, shopper pink gentle remedy sits someplace between science and hype. Nanoleaf’s promoting level is value. Chu says it has been capable of leverage its experience in LED lighting and provide chain to make these merchandise extra reasonably priced than most present choices within the US.

Chu says that Nanoleaf will proceed to concentrate on sensible lighting, even because it strikes into different areas. It stays 80 to 90 % of the enterprise, he says, they usually plan to maintain releasing new kind components and updates. The corporate will attend the IFA tech present in Berlin this fall, the place it’s going to launch a number of new merchandise. “We’re rolling out assist for Matter 1.4 shortly, and have one other product that’s Matter 1.5, which we’re releasing this yr,” says Chu. “So, we’re not going to decelerate.”

However he says the exhausting work was within the underlying know-how, and now new lamp kind components or bulb shapes are simple for the corporate. “A whole lot of the innovation behind dwelling and gaming lighting was establishing the connectivity,” he says. “It was all of the blood, sweat, and tears of getting Thread and Matter truly sorted out.” As an early adopter, Nanoleaf was hit notably exhausting by the delayed rollout of the standard. In the present day, Chu desires to level all these R&D efforts at new challenges.

One space of sensible lighting he’s nonetheless enthusiastic about is making it extra accessible to AI. All of Nanoleaf’s merchandise have open APIs, and Chu is eager to ultimately open-source the code. “That’s the route that know-how goes. With our lighting merchandise and with most sensible dwelling merchandise, the extra open that you may make it, the extra appropriate with AI it may be,” he says. Permit the person to customise their lighting to precisely what they want, he says. “That’s actually the ability of the web of issues.”

Chu’s enthusiasm for the following huge factor is comprehensible for the CEO of a tech firm. For tinkerers, growing new methods to regulate their sensible lights with AI could be a fun side project. However Nanoleaf’s present clients most likely need the corporate to simply concentrate on innovating its ecosystem and bringing new options and capabilities to its app.

The sensible house is present process a significant evolution within the face of AI and within the wake of Matter — an ordinary that, when profitable, makes related units interchangeable. For firms like Nanoleaf, which means differentiation issues greater than ever. I’m not satisfied that constructing AI companions and wellness devices is the way in which to go right here, however no less than Nanoleaf is pondering huge.