Smart home hub from Enschede finds a home with LG

LG Electronics has acquired an 80 percent stake in the University of Twente spinoff Athom, maker of the Homey smart home assistant. With this deal, the Homey operating system, connectivity and partnerships that have been developed over the past ten years will become available to the Korean electronics giant, making it a leading provider of smart home solutions worldwide. Both the founders, creative director Emile Nijssen and commercial director Stefan Witkamp, will stay on as executives of Athom. The company will continue to operate from Enschede, working on its existing line of products and new developments.

UT students Nijssen and Witkamp founded Athom in 2014 to build a home automation hub that combines local data processing with a slew of modern connectivity options. They set up a Kickstarter project, which fetched 200,000 euros within two days. Additional investments allowed the company to scale up, start production of the original Homey in 2015 and bring it to Dutch stores (link in Dutch) at the end of 2016. In 2022, it released the next generation of its platform, the Homey Pro.

Backed by LG’s knowledge and experience in manufacturing, partnerships and worldwide sales, Homey can now grow even faster. In the near future, the Koreans will embed the Dutch technology in their own electronic devices. Both companies will work together to create novel product combinations, starting with integrating LG Thinq-powered home appliances with Homey. They also plan to collaborate on new and better home energy management solutions. A deeper integration with WebOS will empower LG TVs to take an even more central role in the customer’s smart home.

“We were very impressed by the technology, platform and team that Athom has built with Homey. The acquisition is expected to enhance the value of our core businesses and ultimately serve as a foundation for our smart spaces ecosystem business,” says Jung Ki-hyun, executive vice president and head of LG’s Platform Business Center.

“We remain committed to making Homey the best privacy-first smart home platform in the world, fueled by our love for a great user experience and our open approach to the smart home,” comments Nijssen. “Being part of LG helps us greatly to bring our vision to a larger number of users – both in its current and new ways.”