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Amazon Begins Contacting Developers For Secret Smart Home Projects

This article is more than 9 years old.

By Aaron Tilley and Ryan Mac

Amazon.com has recently begun reaching out to developers to build relationships for its secret smart home projects, according to at least one person familiar with the conversations.

"Amazon is looking at this space very intently," said the person who wished to remain anonymous to protect his relationship with the company.

The Seattle retailer is ramping up efforts by pouring $55 million into its Silicon Valley engineering center, Lab126. As first reported today by Reuters, Amazon signed a deal with California that will stretch that spending over a five-year period and lead to an increase of 798 employees. The plan was revealed in a June 19 document with the California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) and showed a $1.2 million tax credit awarded to Amazon subsidiary A2Z Development Center, Inc.

California's listing of the project labels the center as "electronic device research & development." Reuters reported that the expansion will focus on testing various connected home hardware.

Amazon, which is reportedly already testing a device that allowed users to order products from their home with the click of a button, will be going to head-to-head with fellow technology giants Apple and Google in the smart home space. Though the the e-commerce company is in the very early days of its projects, its success will likely come down to Amazon's ability to connect with developers and startups that have already flooded the space with connected thermostats, light bulbs and garage door openers.

Realizing the importance of relationships with smart home startups Nest, which was bought by Google for $3.2 billion at the beginning of this year, recently opened APIs for outside developers. Similarly, Apple announced HomeKit in June as its protocol for connecting third-party home devices together on its proprietary iOS operating system.

Amazon is still in the early stages of this experiment, according to a person in discussion with Amazon, so it's still uncertain if its products will ever hit the market. But the move into the smart home makes plenty of sense for the company. A presumed device could potentially deliver new data from within the home, allowing the company to better understand the needs of their customers. Amazon can also leverage its cloud infrastructure in Amazon Web Services to collect, store and streamline that data.

Amazon’s Lab126 is the company’s renowned Silicon Valley-based skunkworks that developed the company’s Kindle readers and worked on its recent FireTV and Fire Phone products. Dave Limp, Amazon senior vice president of devices, said in an August interview with FORBES that the lab was responsible for building parts of the Fire Phone’s cameras—which contribute to the device’s unique 3-D image features—and operating system.

“We wake up everyday and think about how to build world class devices and world class software to power those devices,” he said.

While sales of the Fire Phone have been flat, leading the Seattle-based company to slash the price of the phone to 99 cents, Amazon continues to explore new device and product categories to add to its core e-commerce business. Based on financial filings, Amazon’s research and development spending has increased every quarter for the last 17 quarters.

Recently the company also hired Babak Parviz, a former director at secretive research lab Google X who was among the pioneers of Google Glass. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed Parviz’ hiring but did not comment on his new role at the company.

The website for Lab126, which was founded in 2004, explains how the skunkworks was named and could offer an explanation behind the A2Z title as well.

“The Lab126 name originated from the arrow in the Amazon logo, which draws a line from A to Z in ‘Amazon,’ " reads the website. “In Lab126, the 1 stands for ‘A’ and the ‘26’ stands for ‘Z.’ The subsidiary functions as an Amazon lab of innovation, research, and development for consumer electronics products, drawing the best minds in Silicon Valley together.”

As far as Amazon's smart home plans, Amazon spokesperson Kinley Pearsall said that the company doesn’t comment on rumors or speculation.

Follow Aaron Tilley on Twitter @aatilley and Ryan Mac @RMac18.