The move will enable LG to integrate the smart home technology of its LG ThinQ platform with Athom's open ecosystem and IoT device connectivity, enhancing the scalability required for AI implementations.
LG Electronics (LG) has acquired an 80% stake in Athom, a smart home platform company based in Enschede, Netherlands. The agreement includes plans to acquire the remaining 20% within the next three years. The strategic move aims to strengthen LG's connectivity within the open smart home ecosystem. By integrating Athom's capabilities with LG's Affectionate Intelligence technology, LG aims to lead the era of AI-driven home innovation.
LG plans to integrate Athom's extensive connectivity, which links thousands of home appliances, sensors and lighting devices, with its Generative AI-enabled LG ThinQ platform. The goal of this integration is to create an AI home that provides optimal spatial solutions by better understanding customers. In LG's AI home, customers will work with Generative AI to manage their home appliances and IoT devices to create a personalized environment that matches their preferences.
The acquisition of Athom will enable LG to incorporate third-party devices and services into its ecosystem. This integration will give LG deeper insights into customer usage patterns and help speed the delivery of personalized services.
LG envisions extending the differentiated customer experience of AI Home to various spaces where customers spend time, including commercial and mobility environments, ultimately realizing and developing the concept of “intelligent spaces.”
Athom is a technology company that sells Homey, a smart home hub that connects home appliances and IoT devices, and also provides cloud subscription services. Founded in 2014, Homey has expanded its business mainly in Europe over the past decade, gaining a customer base of hundreds of thousands of users. As of 2023, Homey devices are sold in Australia, Singapore, the United States, and Canada in addition to Europe.
Athom develops its own hub and OS and builds an independent smart home ecosystem. Its flagship product, Homey Pro, can connect to over 50,000 devices and supports multiple connection methods, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Z-Wave, Matter and Thread.
The Homey App Store, operated by Athom, offers around 1,000 applications for connecting and controlling home devices from brands such as Philips Hue and IKEA. Many of these applications are based on official partnerships and also include a large number of apps developed by the Homey community. This developer community actively contributes to Athom's open platform and is continuously expanding the range of brands and devices that can be connected to the hub. Users can create a smart home environment by downloading apps from the store and linking their devices.
“The acquisition of Athom will be the cornerstone of our AI home business,” said Chung Ki-hyun, executive vice president and head of the Platform Business Center at LG. “By leveraging the synergies between the two companies, we aim to expand our open ecosystem and external integration services to provide customers with a more diverse and multidimensional spatial experience.”
Following the acquisition, Atom will continue to operate independently while maintaining its business operations and brand, with a strategy in place to maximize Atom's growth potential and unique strengths while fostering synergies across its business, R&D capabilities and platform utilization.
According to market research firm TechNavio, the global smart home market is expected to grow from $81.2 billion in 2023 to $260.24 billion by 2028, at a compound annual growth rate of 26.23%.
William Cho, CEO of LG Electronics, concluded: “LG is evolving into an intelligent spatial solutions company that connects and expands experiences in different living spaces. We will continue to make strategic investments to transform business paradigms, as evidenced by our successive forays into platform-based home appliance services and solutions, such as the webOS advertising platform and AI Home.”