Cyvl.ai is bringing data-driven solutions to transportation infrastructure

In the summer after his freshman year at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, an engineering school in Worcester, Massachusetts, Cyvl.ai co-founder and CEO Daniel Pelaez needed a job. He went home and worked at his local public works department, where he noted that there was very little software for tracking road repairs. He was told to go […]

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Popular video doorbells can be easily hijacked, researchers find

Several internet-connected doorbell cameras have a security flaw that allows hackers to take over the camera by just holding down a button, among other issues, according to research by Consumer Reports. On Thursday, the non-profit Consumer Reports published research that detailed four security and privacy flaws in cameras made by EKEN, a company based in […]

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The ‘US Cyber Trust Mark’ finally gives device makers a reason to spend big on security

The Internet of Things (IoT) is in hacker crosshairs. Last year, more than 110 million IoT malware attacks took place — an 87% increase from the previous 12 months. And as connected devices take on more critical roles in the modern home and office, tens of billions more endpoints are coming online.

In this precarious landscape, both individual consumers and enterprises embracing IoT have made cybersecurity a top priority. Now the government is following suit. In July, the White House announced the launch of a “U.S. Cyber Trust Mark” as part of its voluntary labeling program for smart devices.

The mark is a quality seal to help Americans more easily and securely select these products. It comes in the wake of similar proposed regulations like the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act.

Finally, device producers will have minimum cybersecurity standards to meet. Consumers are far more likely to seek out and commit to IoT devices that have a seal like the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark, giving device makers a long-overdue incentive to get up to code.

Here’s why, for the first time, device makers will begin to see cybersecurity as an investment rather than an expense.

Compliance now is more cost-effective than retrofitting later

For years, IoT device makers have catered to customers that wanted cheap products and services, often at the cost of robust security. Manufacturers haven’t been driven to spend money on better protection — until the announcement of these coming changes on either side of the Atlantic.

Complying with the likes of the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark makes financial sense because it ultimately saves device makers time and money down the line. While the White House label program is currently voluntary, there’s a strong possibility that it will become mandatory in a few years.

Device makers that don’t join now risk fines or expensive retrofitting of whole device fleets. Just look at the EU cybersecurity plan — once in practice, national authorities could impose fines of up to €10 million for IoT device makers, or up to 2% of their worldwide annual turnover.

In my opinion, cybersecurity labeling leads to stronger and longer-lasting devices, which can reduce the amount of material waste from manufacturers. Such a decrease aligns with sustainability efforts and emerging legislation in the electronic sphere and lowers the risk of manufacturers being penalized for excessive waste.

Certification creates minimum standard security thresholds

Things like default passwords, always-on cloud features, and minimal product support are concerningly normal in IoT. To earn the government check mark, however, device makers must adhere to basic principles that foster a safe, efficient IoT space. This includes unique and strong passwords, data protection, automatic software updates, and incident detection capabilities.

The intention is to create a security baseline and help close gaps in and among device makers. Cybersecurity is only ever as strong as its weakest link, and a cybersecurity certification forms a community of manufacturers that have a united shield against attackers.

Tech giants like Amazon, Best Buy, Google, LG Electronics, Logitech, and Samsung Electronics have already pledged their support for the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark, which will appear on approved products as a distinct shield logo. This will no doubt encourage other device makers of all sizes to do the same.

With more players involved, there will be more awareness around cybersecurity issues, greater innovation, and a savvier ecosystem. The certification could additionally be a springboard for more complex guidelines that develop in response to new cybersecurity challenges in the coming years.

A Cyber Trust Mark will boost customer retention (and profits)

The U.S. Cyber Trust Mark and its subsequent cybersecurity reevaluation will go a long way to repairing trust in the sector. A report from McKinsey reveals that only 30% of IoT providers believe trust is essential in their solutions; meanwhile, 60% of customers consider it crucial.

This trust gap suggests that device makers haven’t been fully meeting consumer needs and aren’t building long-term relationships — which translates to lost profits. By demonstrating that they are dedicated to security and trustworthy experiences via a certification, device makers can improve user retention and loyalty.

We already know that consumers gravitate to products that have a tick of approval — just look at the Energy Star label. This government-backed symbol identifies appliances that are energy efficient, and consumers explicitly say that the certification positively influences their decision to buy a product with this label.

Users see these marks as a prevetting service, where they know that the goods have been assessed beforehand and achieved government-defined requirements. IoT device makers can expect the same bottom-line benefits.

The U.S. Cyber Trust Mark is the beginning of a more formalized cybersecurity structure in IoT. It will fuel a shift in device making, where manufacturers spend more on cybersecurity but equally reap more valuable returns.

And, device makers that invest sooner will not only be better positioned with their audiences, but they’ll also be poised to smoothly navigate an inevitably more complex digital landscape.

How one software company is beating the SaaS growth blues

The go-go days of software companies growing like crazy are now firmly behind us.

Data indicates that public software companies have added fewer sources of annual recurring revenue (ARR) in the first quarter of 2023 than they did a year earlier. In fact, that metric declined even more compared to the average quarterly number in 2022.


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It’s tough out there, but not every company is reporting lackluster results. Samsara, which went public in late 2021, recently proved that it is still possible to expand fast, and perhaps even more impressively, that it’s possible to hold on to value even if you listed at the end of a venture capital bubble.

TechCrunch+ caught up with Samsara’s CEO and co-founder, Sanjit Biswas, to talk about his company’s performance and the pricing and sales choices that have helped it at least partially buck the slowdown.

Let’s start with a quick refresher on Samsara and its IPO pricing. Then, we’ll explore its first-quarter performance and dig into how its sales model is providing it with a more durable revenue base than most other modern software companies.

The Samsara growth story

It’s fun to go back and read 2021-era coverage, because it was such a wild time. We even noted during Samsara’s IPO pricing run that it felt like no one was paying attention:

One more note before we can sign off on this topic for the day: Doesn’t it feel like a somewhat muted day for a decacorn IPO? Samsara raised venture rounds through a Series F! And yet this IPO feels like it’s skating right under the radar.

At the time, we hypothesized that NFT hype was consuming all the oxygen in the room, or that there were so many IPOs that year that it was just not as exciting as before. Ah, what a good problem to have!

Samsara’s late-2021 IPO set it up to raise capital and go public at a valuation that made little to no sense. We saw that happen to a number of other companies that went public in 2021.

How one software company is beating the SaaS growth blues by Alex Wilhelm originally published on TechCrunch

Haltian nabs funds to equip office buildings with smart sensors

Adopting Internet of Things (IoT) tech for the office isn’t easy — especially at enterprise scale. Companies have IoT device administration to worry about, and also building out the infrastructure necessary to keep those devices connected and operational.

To make it easier, five former co-workers — Pasi Leipälä, Teemu Vaattovaara, Jyrki Okkonen, Ville Ylläsjarvi and Toni Leinonen — founded Haltian, a startup that provides a portfolio of sensors, cellular gateways, device management dashboards and software to help companies orchestrate IoT in the workplace.

Showing investors are keen on the idea, Haltian recently closed a €22 million (~$24 million) funding round led by Mandatum Asset Management Growth Equity with participation from Varma, Tesi, Ventic and Inventure. Bringing the company’s total funding to date to €40 million (~$43.7 million), Leipälä, Haltian’s CEO, says that it’ll be put toward supporting international expansion in Central Europe and North America, as well as Haltian’s recruiting efforts.

Kitty Laine, an investment manager at Mandatum Asset Management, said via email: “We were drawn to Haltian as they are able to digitize the built environment and create savings for their customers from data that was not available before. Their cloud-connected smart sensors and top-notch R&D has received excellent feedback from demanding U.S.-based customers, and we have been excited to see how Haltian’s products are gaining traction in international markets.”

The IoT market has proven resilient to the ups and downs of the broader technology space, with data from Crunchbase showing that the average amount of capital raised by IoT startups in 2022 reached the highest point in over a decade.

Unsurprisingly, Haltian isn’t the only startup vying for a slice of the substantial VC pie. Recently, a startup called Memfault raised $24 million for its platform designed to help companies manage their growing IoT device fleets. Elsewhere, Fleet has secured tens of millions of dollars for its device management software. There’s also Esper, which landed $30 million in May 2021 to grow its IoT DevOps platform.

What sets Haltian apart, Leipälä — the CEO — says, is the exhaustiveness of its product offering. Leipälä and Haltian’s other co-founders previously worked at Nokia in one of the firm’s smartphone divisions, where the seed of the idea for Haltian came from.

“Haltian was first concentrating on providing premium engineering services to other companies. Our own IoT products started to be developed after a couple of years, with income earned from engineering services,” Leipälä told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Haltian is one of the few companies able to provide a full stack IoT solution. We’re able to customize any . . . element according to customer requirements.”

Through a combination of sensors and AI algorithms, Haltian’s platform can count the number of people in an office or building or track things like CO2 and humidity levels. It can also monitor for light usage, leaks and dips in temperature as well as detect when paper, towel and soap dispensers are about to run low.

It’s a lot of sensitive data that Haltian is collecting. But Leipälä asserts that it’s anonymized and stored in a private cloud. (Absent a glance at the customer service agreement, we’ll have to take his word for it.)

“For Haltian, scalability is not only about how many devices can connect to a single gateway, but how thousands of implementation locations can be served logistically as well as how easy and fast the installation, onboarding and life cycle management can be done,” he added.

A factor working in Haltian’s favor is the growing interest in IoT among the enterprise. In a 2021 survey by Omdia, the London-based consultancy firm, 90% of organizations said that they saw IoT as core to their digital transformation plans or being deployed across multiple areas of their organization. A separate report by Gartner, published a year earlier, estimated that 47% of organizations plan to increase their investments in IoT, with the goal of reducing costs and bolstering their overall digital transformation efforts.

Interestingly, around 75% of Haltian’s revenue comes from sales of its IoT devices, Leipälä says.

“We’ve grown annually at a rate of nearly 50% over the last three years, reaching revenues of around €20 million (~$21.85 million) last year,” Leipälä said. “Since the pandemic, there has been increased focus on making office designs aligned with the company cultures, accompanied by supporting technologies — e.g., IoT solutions. At the same time, IoT sensor solutions have become more affordable, cost-effective and easier to implement.”

Riding the upward trend, Haltian recently expanded to the U.S. and Amsterdam, opening offices in California and Holland. So far, it’s raised a total of €40 million (~$43.71 million) and plans to grow its employee base from 145 people to around 170 by the end of the year.

Haltian nabs funds to equip office buildings with smart sensors by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Infogrid raises $90M for its AI-driven building monitoring tech

Infogrid, a startup that uses AI to collect and analyze data on things like air quality, occupancy and energy consumption, today announced that it raised $90 million in a Series B round led by Northzone and AO Proptech. William Cowell de Gruchy, Infogrid’s CEO, says that the cash will be put toward product development, strategic hires and customer acquisition efforts.

“Now was the time to raise the capital and use it to drive our expansion,” De Gruchy said. “We are coming off of 5x growth last year and the market is strongly calling for our solutions … We opted for equity because alongside capital, we want strategic partners to help us scale to the next level and we have both VCs and clients and partners investing. This brings value far greater than even the cash.”

De Gruchy — who has a fascinating history, having studied cage fighting and served as an army officer before pivoting to a quieter, white-collar career in due diligence analysis — founded Infogrid in 2018. While working for strategic advisory firm Drystone Strategy, De Gruchy routinely visited companies that he was “diligencing” for private equity deals, including dairies, roofing companies and distribution warehouses.

While on these “diligencing” visits, De Gruchy spotted what he describes as a lack of real-time digital data and visibility into “operational inefficiencies,” as well as health risks and environmental concerns surrounding buildings and facilities.

“When I asked why people weren’t using current-day technologies — e.g. cloud computing, cellular connectivity and sensors — to solve this issue, they repeatedly answered in the same way; it was too complex and too expensive,” De Gruchy told TechCrunch in an email interview. “I set out to answer that problem and defeat the incumbent solution — the clipboard — and that’s the seed that became Infogrid today.”

Infogrid’s platform, powered by AI, gathers and analyzes data from internet of things (IoT) sensors to help property managers and owners optimize the performance of their various buildings — at least in theory. Via IoT sensors manufactured by an ecosystem of hardware partners, Infogrid can measure domains such as the number of people, air quality and cleaning needs throughout a building, for example, as well as track energy usage and CO2 levels in relation to the number of people in a building, so that customers can make adjustments impacting sustainability scores and operating costs.

Infogrid

Image Credits: Infogrid

As De Gruchy explains, the types of customers adopting Infogrid are usually looking to solve facilities management issues like avoiding unnecessary cleaning, preventing pointless tap flushing for legionella compliance or environmental, social and governance reporting.

“We collect nearly 4 billion data points per month, up from 500 million a year ago, and growing exponentially,” De Gruchy said. “This trains our AI, which is then refined with user feedback, making it better.”

Infogrid competes with a number of companies in the buildings management space, including BrainBox, Aquicore, and Sidewalklabs’ Mesa, whose algorithms make fine-grained adjustments to climate control and monitoring systems on the fly. Meanwhile, Facilio and Buildings IOT, two other rivals, install and configure building control systems and bring the data from those systems together within a unified management interface.

The growing number of competitors coincides with an uptick in VC investments in IoT companies. IoT companies raising funds in 2022 pulled in $15.9 million on average, up 30% from the previous year, as Crunchbase data reveals.

De Gruchy credits several factors with Infogrid’s success. First, he notes that an increasing number of regulations — like London banning home and office rentals below a certain energy threshold — are forcing companies to consider investing in a monitoring platform. Second, he argues that Infogrid is differentiated from other IoT-based building management systems in that it offers more context, specifically occupancy and air quality data.

“There is a major transformation underway in real estate as people reduce their footprint and are forced to take sustainability seriously,” De Gruchy said. “Both are tailwinds for Infogrid as companies that seek less, but greener, real estate flock to greener, more tech-enabled buildings. Infogrid helps our clients to provide exactly this, which improves their rental yields and asset values.”

When asked about the size of Infogrid’s customer base, De Gruchy wouldn’t give a figure, save claiming that the startup services “some of the largest commercial real estate services companies in the world.” He also wouldn’t give a ballpark with respect to revenue, and — in a potential cause for concern — wouldn’t commit to growing Infogrid’s 250-person headcount this year.

But he repeatedly assured TechCrunch that business is healthy.

“The pandemic was a strong tailwind; it drove much greater interest in remote monitoring at the time, and has driven many of the macro environmental, social and governance and real estate consolidation trends,” De Gruchy added. “This is a venn diagram ranging between point solutions for things like energy or air quality, older building management system players, software-only dashboards that scrape data from existing networks, or in-house solutions. None of these deliver everything Infogrid does, so they are only competitive in small sub areas, and many times would-be competitors are partners as we’re stronger selling a holistic solution together.”

Infogrid raises $90M for its AI-driven building monitoring tech by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Amazon opens its low-bandwidth, long-range Sidewalk network to developers

Back in 2019, Amazon announced Sidewalk, its low-bandwidth, long-range wireless network that uses the 900 MHz spectrum to connect Internet of Things (IoT) devices. It does this by creating a mesh network between Amazon’s own Echo and Ring devices and sharing a small part of their owner’s bandwidth. Ideally, this means Sidewalk will be able to connect devices that sit beyond the reach of a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi signal. Until now, though, only a select number of developers were able to build applications for the network. But that’s changing today. The company is now shipping software and hardware development kits, as well as an easy-to-use test kit to test the available Sidewalk connectivity in your neighborhood.

Using the new test kit, developers will be able to check their local signal strength on a map to get a better sense of whether their devices will be able to connect to the network before they start working on a product.

Amazon sent me one of these Ring-branded devices to try. Getting started with it involves little more than powering it up (it does have a battery for mobile usage) and logging into Amazon’s web-based Sidewalk coverage service. From there, you can quickly see all of the raw data from the GPS-enabled test kit and get access to Amazon’s U.S.-wide coverage map.

To ensure user privacy, the coverage maps only show coverage within a 900m-by-900m square area. You will be able to see the exact location of your own device, but not other devices that report into the coverage map.

“We’ve rapidly built out a long-range, low-bandwidth network that now covers more than 90% of the U.S. population, and this is an open invitation for developers to put it to the test,” said Dave Limp, senior vice president of Amazon Devices & Services. “Many types of connected devices have been limited by the range of Wi-Fi and the cost of cellular technology, which has hindered the ability to connect devices like environmental sensors, leak detectors and smart locks. Sidewalk is designed to provide a secure, low-cost way to invent and connect a whole new range of devices, and we can’t wait to see what developers build.”

Sidewalk coverage map. Image Credits: Amazon

For the software development kits, Amazon partnered with Nordic Semiconductor, Silicon Labs, Texas Instruments and module vendor Quectel. These companies will also offer hardware development kits, with Quectel launching a Sidewalk connectivity module that will allow developers to quickly take Sidewalk-enabled devices into production. Amazon is also launching mobile SDKs for iOS and Android to help developers build Sidewalk into their mobile apps. The company is also launching an app that will help developers debug and troubleshoot their devices in the field.

It’s worth noting that Sidewalk is also natively integrated with AWS’ IoT Core service, which allows businesses to connect and manage their fleets of IoT devices. “The integration of AWS IoT Core and Amazon Sidewalk marks a significant milestone for developers, manufacturers and customers, streamlining the design, connection and deployment of Amazon Sidewalk based IoT solutions,” said Yasser Alsaied, vice president of IoT at Amazon Web Services. “Now, with AWS IoT Core for Amazon Sidewalk, developers can access 200+ AWS services to build scalable solutions on top of a highly reliable, secure and free-to-connect wireless network.”

Amazon opens its low-bandwidth, long-range Sidewalk network to developers by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

Memfault raises $24M to help companies manage their growing IoT device fleets

At the same time internet of things (IoT) devices and embedded software are becoming more complex, manufacturers are looking for ways to effectively manage the increasing volume of edge hardware. According to Statista, the number of consumer edge-enabled IoT devices is forecast to grow to almost 6.5 billion by 2030, up from 4 billion in 2020.

Capitalizing on the trends, Memfault, a platform that allows IoT device manufacturers to find issues in their edge products over the cloud, has closed a $24 million Series B funding round led by Stripes with participation from the 5G Open Innovation Lab, Partech and Uncork. The investment brings Memfault’s total raised to more than $35 million following a $8.5 million cash infusion in April 2021.

“We sharpened our go-to-market motion in 2022 and saw a clear acceleration in the business,” Memfault co-founder and CEO François Baldassari told TechCrunch in an email interview. “We feel confident that our playbook for sales-led growth is at a level of maturity where we can double down on our investment and accelerate growth. This was not the case a year ago; there is more talent available on the market than at any time since we started the company.”

Baldassari first conceived of Memfault while at smartwatch startup Pebble, where he worked alongside Memfault’s other two co-founders, Tyler Hoffman and Chris Coleman, for several years. At Pebble, the trio had to investigate hardware issues that were often difficult to fix remotely, which led them to create cloud-based software and performance monitoring infrastructure to improve the process.

After leaving Pebble, François joined Oculus as head of the embedded software team while Hoffman and Coleman took senior engineering roles at Fitbit. The infrastructure they created at Pebble stuck with them, though, and in 2018, the three reunited to found Memfault.

“We offer the tools to de-risk launch, prepare for the inevitability of post-launch issues and deliver a continuously improving, higher-quality product overall,” François said. “We can help companies ship more feature-rich products with continuous feature updates after the devices are in the field while helping companies stay in compliance with environmental, privacy and security regulations and avoid service-level agreement and warranty violations.”

Memfault

Image Credits: Memfault

Stripping away the marketing fluff, Memfault provides software development kits (SDK) that let manufacturers upload performance data and error reports to a private cloud. There, it’s stored, analyzed and indexed so engineers can access it via a web interface to look for anomalies and troubleshoot problems as they occur.

François acknowledged that some manufacturers try to extend software reliability tools to cover hardware or build in-house teams to tackle bugs. But he argues that both approaches end up being more expensive and require more technical resources than deploying a service like Memfault.

“You can never anticipate every use case that a user might subject your device to, and there are some bugs that only surface in one in 10,000 instances. Trying to replicate that is nearly impossible,” François said. “Using Memfault, engineers react to issues in minutes rather than weeks, the majority of issues are automatically deduplicated and a clear picture of fleet health can be established at all times.”

While cybersecurity isn’t its main focus, Memfault has sometime rivals in startups like Sternum, Armis Shield-IoT and SecuriThings, whose platforms offer remote tools for monitoring security threats across IoT device fleets. More directly, Memfault competes with Amazon’s AWS IoT Device Management, Microsoft’s Azure IoT Edge, Google’s Cloud IoT and startups like Balena and Zededa, which sell utilities to seed over-the-air updates and perform high-level troubleshooting.

Memfault claims to have a sizeable market foothold regardless, with “hundreds” of companies in its customer base including Bose, Logitech, Lyft and Traeger. And it’s not resting on its laurels.

To stay ahead of the pack, Memfault plans to use the proceeds from its Series B to expand its platform’s software support (it recently announced Android and Linux SDKs) and invest in out-of-the-box integrations, adding to its existing partnerships with semiconductor manufacturers including Infineon, Nordic Semiconductors and NXP. Memfault also intends to expand its headcount, aiming to roughly double in size from 38 people to 80 by the end of the year.

François said that Memfault is also exploring ways it could build AI into future products, although that work remains in the early stages.

“We see promise in AI’s ability to help us develop sharper anomaly detection and error classification capabilities,” François said. “We’ve accumulated the largest corpus of hardware and firmware errors in the industry and hope to train AI systems on that data in the future.”

Asked about macroeconomic headwinds, François — who wouldn’t discuss revenue — admitted that the pandemic-spurred chip shortage affected Memfault’s customers and market “quite a bit.” But it turned out to be an blessing in disguise.

“In some cases, customers have been unable to find enough chips to produce the number of devices they planned on. In other cases, they’ve had to switch to new chips they’ve not previously had on their devices,” François explained. “In these cases, Memfault has been a huge help to our customers. Many engineers tell us that they aren’t sure what their firmware will look like running on these ‘Frankenstein’ devices — but with visibility into fleet data, diagnostics and debugging info from Memfault, they’ve been able to ship confidently.”

François volunteered that Memfault has maintained “high” gross margins and a low burn multiple — “burn multiple” referring to how much the company’s spending in order to generate each incremental dollar of annual recurring revenue. (The lower the multiple, the better.) Of course, it’s all tough to evaluate without firmer numbers. But when pressed, François stressed that Memfault hasn’t been growing at any cost.

“We’ve always been focused on building a long-term sustainable business,” François said. “Although there is a broader slowdown in tech, the global trend is going towards more automation. Most customers and prospects have told us how they are willing to spend on software and automation to stay ahead of competition.”

Memfault raises $24M to help companies manage their growing IoT device fleets by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Amazon Sidewalk adds new partners, plans to open to developers soon

At CES, Amazon today announced that a number of new devices from four manufactureres will soon join its Sidewalk network. Sidewalk, Amazon’s long-range, low-bandwidth IoT mesh network that is powered by sharing a small portion of a user’s bandwidth from devices like the company’s Echo speakers and Ring cameras, currently supports the Tile tracker, Amazon’s own Ring cameras and sensors, as well as Level smart locks and CareBand’s senior-care systems. Now, you can add sensors from Browan and New Cosmos, Meshify and Deviceroy’s Aria to this list, though only the Deviceroy system, which will connect solar inverters to the internet, is currently available, with the rest launching later this year.

For the most part, these four new partners are not exactly household names. Amazon’s Tanuj Mohan, the company’s GM and CTO for Sidewalk, however, told me that a number of new partners will launch over the course of this year. More importantly, he also said that Amazon plans to open up the Sidewalk network to developers in the first half of this year. This, he noted, will enable virtually anyone who wants to get started with building IoT products to order a reference kit from Amazon’s partners and get going in days, all without having to worry about connectivity.

“Anybody who has an idea should be able to go to an AWS website, find a hardware kit from Silicon Labs, TI or from somebody, order the kit and be able to get this kit flowing data via AWS into an application,” he explained. “They can start writing literally as soon as the kit is in their hands. So that is what we expect [when we] open for developers. My vision is that with some of these kits and devices, they could actually try building something real out of it and maybe even in low numbers for proof of concepts to prove their business case in a timespan that was never before possible.”

As Mohan noted, one of the major challenges for the Sidewalk team is to get people to change the way they think about IoT connectivity. “The market doesn’t fully appreciate why sidewalk is different,” he said when I asked him what his team’s hardest challenge is. “They have heard that, oh, Matter solves everything, or ZigBee solves everything, or we have had this forever. But not really. You haven’t had a network that’s just there and a device that ships to your house that you power on and it’s on. Yes, maybe a cell phone with a SIM card does that. But nothing else.”

Some manufacturers may have gotten started with ZigBee or WiFi to add smarts to everyday devices like a faucet, he noted, but then learned that people didn’t have a ZigBee hub or just wouldn’t configure it. “It was an investment that wasn’t worthwhile,” he said. “If you look at the percentages of some of these smart things that smartness was forced on, a very low percentage of them got ever got connected.”

Ideally, that’s not a problem with Sidewalk and while Matter is trying to solve some of these problems, Mohan argued that Sidewalk may actually help Matter to grow because it can provide the initial networking capabilities for the Matter network to allow for setting up new devices.

Image Credits: Meshify

Read more about CES 2023 on TechCrunch

Amazon Sidewalk adds new partners, plans to open to developers soon by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch