To start with, Siemens made 2 acquisitions in 2018 – Enlightened Inc. and J2 Innovations – before acquiring Comfy, mentioned in the previous post.
Enlightened – Iot: lightening sensors and more
Three main applications: lightening, HVAC system (heating, a ventilation, and air-conditioning), space utilization.
For example the lightening system, built on IoT architecture, consists of a network of LED lights and their patented sensors connected together to form a sensor and analytics platform. Data is collected 65 times/second to detect environmental and occupancy changes and take action on lighting needs in real-time.
J2 Innovations – iot: framework
Created FIN (Fluid INtegration) Framework, an open framework for building automation and IoT applications. It is used as an integration layer and itself doesn’t design/manufacture IoT devices.
According to its website, it employs an applications server technology with tagging and data modeling. FIN is a HTML5 browser based unified toolset optimized for efficient workflows.
View – iot: glass
A dynamic glass company, View raised $1.1 billion from SoftBank Vision Fund in November 2018.
With touch displays available..
Yes, it is the Age of Glass…
Kinestral – IOT: Glass
In the same space, we have another company Kinestral raising $100 million Series D in Jan 2019 (two weeks ago).
Latch – IoT: Door
Famous for its early-stage collaboration with UPS – delivery indoor while occupants are out, Latch raised $70 million in August 2018.
Latch + UPS is competing with Amazon Key (then with its $1 billion acquisition of Ring in Feb 2018) in the same field.
Before Amazon’s move, in Oct 2017, Assa Abloy, the $23 billion Swedish lock giant that owns Yale and many other brands — announced that it is buying US-based smart lock maker August Home to double down on new technology. (TechCrunch)
Sigfox – IoT: Platform
Based in Europe, Sigfox is designing a Low Power Wide Area network (Ultra Narrow Band radio operating in the unlicensed bands) for IoT connectivity.
And of course the products to centralize data from big tech companies with Amazon and Google the most aggressive ones.
