Smart lighting company Nanoleaf has been unusually quiet lately. While competitors like Govee and Philips Hue have been rolling out new products and new features at a breakneck pace, Nanoleaf has introduced several smart lighting products in the past two years. There’s a reason for this silence – the company has been going through a “product transformation” focused on life, robotics, and, of course, AI.
“The smart home is becoming boring,” says Gimmy Chu, CEO and co-founder of Nanoleaf, now a smart lighting company. “Our product needs to evolve to integrate with the other products we will be releasing.”
“A smart home becomes boring.”
– Jimmy Choo
Nanoleaf is best known for its customizable, interactive RGB lighting, with products like its modular lighting panels and software that add lights to what’s on your computer or television screen. It was an early adopter of Thread and Matter, and its smart light was one of the first Thread products to work with Apple’s HomePod Mini when it launched in 2020.
But Chu says open standards like Matter are leading to sales of smart lighting — as evidenced by companies like Ikea selling full-color smart lights for about $10 that work everywhere. This is something he and others predicted when Matter was launched nearly four years ago.
Photo: Nanoleaf
Photo: Nanoleaf
Chu sees generative AI as the next wave of innovation. For technology company Nanoleaf, that means focusing on integrated AI, where technology can exist and interact with the real world. “It’s putting intelligence into the hardware that does something useful,” Chu said, not just putting ChatGPT on speakers. “AI is a big buzzword right now, but it’s a transformative technology that will change the way everything works, including the products we develop.”
Although he is coy about specifics, he says they have at least three products launching this year with AI. The images he shared show that these will be some kind of AI powered toys, desk companion, and robotic microcontroller.
A blog post on the company’s site describes how it plans to use AI in “personal and impactful” ways to make everyday life easier and improve intelligence and learning, but doesn’t offer concrete details about what this will look like. Chu can only share that one product is related to early childhood development. He also said that robots will be a big part of the company’s future, but it will take time to get there.
Another pivot is towards health products. Nanoleaf is launching a red light therapy mask in 2025, which Chu says has become one of the company’s best-selling products. It has since added a red light therapy panel and wand, and will introduce four new red light therapy devices to treat your face and body this year. This will “include heating, and massage/vibration settings,” Chu said.
Like much of the health gadget market, consumer red light therapy sits somewhere between science and hype. Nanoleaf’s selling point is value. Chu says it has been able to leverage its expertise in LED lighting and supply chain to make these products more affordable than many current options in the US.
Nanoleaf is still going to be a smart lighting company
Chu says Nanoleaf will continue to focus on smart lighting, even as it moves into other areas. It’s still 80 to 90 percent of the business, he says, and they plan to keep rolling out new items and updates. The company will attend the IFA technology fair in Berlin this fall, where it will present several new products. “We will be launching support for Matter 1.4 very soon, and we have another product called Matter 1.5, which we are releasing this year,” said Chu. “Therefore, we will not slow down.”
But he says the hard work has been in the underlying technology, and now new things in lamp forms or bulb shapes are not easy for the company. He says: “Many of the innovations behind home lighting and gaming were establishing connections. “It was all blood, sweat, and tears to actually get Thread and Matter.” As an early adopter, Nanoleaf was deeply affected by the delay in releasing the standard. Today, Chu wants to direct all those R&D efforts to new challenges.
One area of smart lighting we’re still excited about is making it more accessible to AI. All Nanoleaf products have open APIs, and Chu is committed to keeping the code open source. “That’s the way technology is going. With our lighting products and a lot of smart home products, when you can make it open, it’s very AI-enabled,” he said. Allow the user to customize their lighting to exactly what they need, he said. “That’s the power of the Internet of Things.”
Chu’s enthusiasm for the next big thing is understandable for a tech company CEO. For geeks, creating new ways to control their smart lights with AI can be a fun side project. But Nanoleaf’s existing customers probably want the company to focus on developing its ecosystem and bringing new features and functions to its app.
The smart home is undergoing a major revolution in the face of AI and after Matter – a level that, when successful, will make connected devices changeable. For companies like Nanoleaf, that means differentiation is more important than ever. I’m not sure that building AI counterparts and health gadgets is the way to go here, but at least Nanoleaf is thinking big.
