Nanoleaf, the once-innovative smart lighting company, is now facing a crossroads. With competitors like Govee and Philips Hue rapidly introducing new products and features, Nanoleaf has been relatively quiet, launching only a handful of smart lighting products in the last two years. This lull is not due to a lack of innovation, but rather a strategic shift towards a more holistic approach to technology, focusing on wellness, robotics, and AI. The company's CEO, Gimmy Chu, believes that the smart home market is becoming 'boring' and needs to evolve to incorporate other products and technologies.
One of the key areas of focus for Nanoleaf is embodied AI, where technology can exist in and interact with the real world. Chu envisions AI as a transformative technology that will change the way everything works, including the products that Nanoleaf develops. The company has at least three products launching this year around embodied AI, including an AI-powered toy, a desk companion, and a robotic microcontroller. These products will be designed to enhance creativity and learning, and one is specifically related to early childhood development.
Nanoleaf is also pivoting towards wellness products, with the launch of a red light therapy mask in 2025 and a red light therapy panel and wand in 2026. Chu believes that Nanoleaf's expertise in LED lighting and supply chain has allowed the company to make these products more affordable than most current options in the US. The company plans to continue focusing on smart lighting, even as it moves into other areas, and will attend the IFA tech show in Berlin this fall to launch several new products.
However, Chu acknowledges that the hard work was in the underlying technology, and now new lamp form factors or bulb shapes are easy for the company. Nanoleaf will still be a smart lighting company, but it will also be more accessible to AI. All of Nanoleaf's products have open APIs, and Chu is keen to eventually open-source the code. This will allow users to customize their lighting to exactly what they need, and will make the company's products more compatible with AI.
While Nanoleaf's existing customers may want the company to focus on innovating its ecosystem and bringing new features and functions to its app, Chu's enthusiasm for the next big thing is understandable for the CEO of a tech company. The smart home market is undergoing a major evolution in the face of AI and in the wake of Matter, a standard that makes connected devices interchangeable. For companies like Nanoleaf, that means differentiation matters more than ever. While I'm not convinced that building AI companions and wellness gadgets is the way to go, at least Nanoleaf is thinking big and exploring new possibilities.
