BOSTON, Jan. 05, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sense, the home intelligence platform that interprets the power usage and activity of devices in the home, today announced an additional investment from a new investor, iRobot Ventures (IRBT), resulting in the completion of its series A Round. This brings the total for the round, co-led by Shell Technology Ventures (SVT) and Energy Impact Partners (EIP), to $15 Million and Sense’s total funding to-date to $20 Million. Following the success of its pre-order release in 2016, the company is announcing general product availability as well as an integration with IFTTT. In addition, Sense is expanding its executive team with the hiring of Scott Taylor, Vice President of Business Development at Sense.
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/e5cb5270-a391-4e72-9305-ef15a7b86822
- Sense recently closed a $15M Series A Round, co-led by Shell Technology Ventures (STV) and Energy Impact Partners (EIP). The round included participation from previous seed investors Capricorn Investment Group, Prelude Ventures, CRV, and hardware accelerator Bolt; and has brought on a new investor, iRobot Ventures (IRBT) who recently participated in the completion of the round.
- Additionally, the company is connecting the Sense platform to IFTTT, which allows homeowners to have their connected and unconnected devices talk to one another.
- IFTTT is Sense’s first step toward home automation and the company hopes to learn from both the passionate Sense community and the early-adopter IFTTT community. The IFTTT recipes they will create with Sense will help determine additional IoT integrations tech-savvy consumers are looking for and what the smart home of 2017 will truly look like.
- Example IFTTT and Sense integration recipes include:
- “Turn on my connected lights when the garage door opens.”
- “Send my kids a text when the washing machine is done.”
- Sense’s view is that a smart home consists of three layers:
- broad-based sensing
- intelligence
- automation
- In contrast to point solutions (e.g. a connected garage door or a connected oven), broad-based sensing is the ability to detect unconnected or “dumb” appliances (e.g. a regular refrigerator or curling iron). Broad-based sensing in turn enables the mining of device intelligence to determine what is actually happening in the home and whether appliances are performing efficiently and reliably. As a last step and through broad-based sensing, Sense integrates connected and unconnected appliances so that they can talk to one another which is otherwise known as home automation, as a result bringing to life the concept of the smart home.
- Scott Taylor joins the company as Vice President of Business Development. He brings over 20 years of experience in mobile products and enterprise software platforms. In his day-to-day role at Sense, Scott will lead the charge in developing strategic partnerships with energy providers and others and help understand the needs of smart homeowners.
- Sense is now available for purchase for $299 online at www.sense.com and ships anywhere in the U.S.
CES® visitors can check out Sense for themselves at the Eureka Park Marketplace in the Sands Hotel and Casino (Hall G – 51531) in ENGIE’s booth from Jan. 5-8. For more information on Sense, please visit www.Sense.com.
Quote from Michael Phillips, CEO and Co-Founder, Sense:
"Contrary to how the smart home has been positioned in the market to-date; at Sense, we believe that in order for the smart home to truly come to fruition, we must be able to connect the dots between connected and unconnected devices. In doing so, we enable them to communicate with one another and can fully achieve complete home automation,” said Michael Phillips, CEO and co-founder of Sense. “As a first step in this process, we look forward to learning what customers actually want to have automated in their home by integrating with IFTTT. We are excited to get Sense into as many homes as possible so homeowners can be more empowered about the efficiency and reliability of their home appliances and devices.”
Quote from Scott Taylor, Vice President of Business Development, Sense:
“I have been impressed by the level of interest Sense has attracted from companies looking to help their end customers better manage their energy and their homes. I look forward to working with energy providers and other strategic partners to provide their customers with home awareness and energy insights.”
About Sense
Sense's mission is to make all homes intelligent by keeping people informed about what's happening in their homes, and helping to make them safer, more efficient, and more reliable. Founded in 2013 by pioneers in speech recognition, Sense uses machine learning technology to provide real-time insights on device behavior, even for those devices that are not "smart." Customers rely on Sense for a wide range of uses including checking what time their kids get home, monitoring their home appliances, determining whether they left appliances running or doors open and identifying how to reduce their energy costs. Sense is headquartered in Cambridge, Mass. To make sense of your energy, visit: https://sense.com