Our Take
CEO Gimmy Chu admits smart home lighting is boring and commoditized, but his pivot to AI companions and wellness gadgets looks more like throwing concepts at the wall than strategic focus.
Why it matters
Nanoleaf's struggles show how Matter's success creates existential pressure for hardware companies when $10 smart bulbs work everywhere. Other IoT players face the same differentiation crisis.
Do this week
Smart home integrators: audit your lighting vendor roadmaps before Q3 renewals so you can avoid companies abandoning core products for AI pivots.
Nanoleaf abandons lighting focus for AI toys and wellness
Smart lighting company Nanoleaf has launched red light therapy products and will release three AI hardware devices this year, CEO Gimmy Chu told The Verge. The company launched a red light therapy mask in 2025 that became "one of the company's top-selling products" (company-reported), followed by panels and wands. Four new red light therapy devices with heating and vibration features will launch this year.
Chu teased three upcoming AI products: an AI-powered toy, a desk companion, and a robotic microcontroller. One targets early childhood development, he said, but provided no technical specifications or capabilities. The company claims these represent "embodied AI" that "exists in and interact with the real world," but offered no concrete details about functionality.
The pivot comes as Nanoleaf has "launched just a handful of smart lighting products in the last two years" while competitors Govee and Philips Hue released new products rapidly. Chu attributed the slowdown to "brand evolution" away from lighting.
Matter commoditized smart lighting faster than expected
Chu directly blamed Matter adoption for commoditizing smart lighting, citing companies like Ikea selling full-color smart bulbs for around $10 that work across platforms. "The smart home is getting kind of boring," Chu said, acknowledging what he and others predicted when Matter launched four years ago.
Smart lighting remains 80 to 90 percent of Nanoleaf's business (company-reported), but Chu sees limited innovation potential in new lamp shapes or bulb formats. "A lot of the innovation behind home and gaming lighting was establishing the connectivity," he said, referring to Thread and Matter integration work that hit the company hard during delayed standard rollouts.
The company's challenge reflects broader pressure on IoT hardware makers as interoperability standards succeed. When smart devices become interchangeable, hardware companies lose pricing power and platform lock-in advantages.
Red light therapy claims lack independent validation
Nanoleaf positions itself on price in the red light therapy market, claiming its LED expertise and supply chain enable more affordable products than US competitors. However, the company provided no clinical data, FDA clearances, or independent efficacy studies for its wellness devices.
The AI hardware teases offer even less substance. Images show generic form factors without technical specifications, processing capabilities, or differentiation from existing AI assistants. Chu's "embodied AI" framing lacks concrete use cases beyond "early childhood development."
Smart lighting customers seeking ecosystem improvements may find resources diverted to unproven categories. The company promises continued lighting innovation and Matter 1.4 and 1.5 support, but executive attention clearly lies elsewhere.