{"id":438718,"date":"2026-05-08T13:01:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T13:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/438718\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T13:01:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T13:01:10","slug":"nanoleaf-bets-its-future-on-robots-red-light-therapy-and-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/438718\/","title":{"rendered":"Nanoleaf bets its future on robots, red light therapy, and AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Smart lighting company Nanoleaf has been unusually quiet recently. While competitors such as Govee and Philips Hue have been pumping out new products<\/a> and innovative features<\/a> at an impressive pace, Nanoleaf has launched just a handful of smart lighting products<\/a> in the last two years. There\u2019s a reason for this lull \u2014 the company has been going through a \u201cbrand evolution\u201d<\/a> focused on wellness, robotics, and, of course, AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe smart home is getting kind of boring,\u201d says the ever-candid Gimmy Chu, CEO and cofounder of Nanoleaf, which he now doesn\u2019t want me to call a smart lighting company. \u201cOur brand needs to evolve to incorporate some of the other products that we\u2019re going to be releasing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe smart home is getting kind of boring.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Gimmy Chu<\/p>\n

Nanoleaf is best known for its customizable, interactive RGB lighting ecosystem, with products like its modular lighting panels<\/a> and software that mirrors lights to what\u2019s on your computer or television screen<\/a>. It was an early adopter of Thread and Matter<\/a>, and its smart bulb was one of the first Thread products to work with Apple\u2019s HomePod Mini<\/a> when it launched in 2020.<\/p>\n

But Chu says open standards like Matter are leading to the commodification of smart lighting \u2014 as evidenced by companies like Ikea selling full-color smart lightbulbs for around $10<\/a> that work with every platform. This is something he and others predicted when Matter launched nearly four years ago.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Image: Nanoleaf<\/p>\n

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Image: Nanoleaf<\/p>\n

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Nanoleaf shared these images as teasers of what its move into AI and robotics will look like. Image: Nanoleaf<\/p>\n

Chu sees generative AI as the next wave of innovation. For Nanoleaf the tech company, that means a focus on embodied AI, where the technology can exist in and interact with the real world. \u201cIt\u2019s putting intelligence into hardware that actually does something useful,\u201d says Chu, not just putting ChatGPT in speakers. \u201cAI is a huge buzzword right now, but it\u2019s a transformative technology that will change the way that everything works, including the products that we develop.\u201d<\/p>\n

While he is coy about specifics, he says they have at least three products launching this year around embodied AI. Images he shared show that these will be some sort of AI-powered toy, a desk companion, and a robotic microcontroller.<\/p>\n

A blog post<\/a> on the company\u2019s site explains how it plans to use AI in \u201cpersonalized and impactful\u201d ways to simplify daily living and enhance creativity and learning, but it offers no concrete details about what this will actually look like. Chu would only share that one product is related to early childhood development. He also said that robotics will be a big part of the company\u2019s future, but that it will take a while to get there.<\/p>\n

The other pivot is toward wellness products. Nanoleaf launched a red light therapy mask in 2025<\/a>, which Chu says has become one of the company\u2019s top-selling products. It has since added a red light therapy panel and wand<\/a>, and will launch four new red light therapy devices to treat your face and body this year. These will \u201cinclude heating, and massage\/vibration settings,\u201d says Chu.<\/p>\n

Like much of the wellness gadget market, consumer red light therapy sits somewhere between science<\/a> and hype<\/a>. Nanoleaf\u2019s selling point is price. Chu says it has been able to leverage its expertise in LED lighting and supply chain to make these products more affordable than most current options in the US.<\/p>\n

Chu says that Nanoleaf will continue to focus on smart lighting, even as it moves into other areas. It remains 80 to 90 percent of the business, he says, and they plan to keep releasing new form factors and updates. The company will attend the IFA tech show in Berlin this fall, where it will launch several new products. \u201cWe\u2019re rolling out support for Matter 1.4 shortly, and have another product that\u2019s Matter 1.5, which we\u2019re releasing this year,\u201d says Chu. \u201cSo, we\u2019re not going to slow down.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he says the hard work was in the underlying technology, and now new lamp form factors or bulb shapes are easy for the company. \u201cA lot of the innovation behind home and gaming lighting was establishing the connectivity,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was all the blood, sweat, and tears of getting Thread and Matter actually sorted out.\u201d As an early adopter, Nanoleaf was hit particularly hard by the delayed rollout of the standard<\/a>. Today, Chu wants to point all those R&D efforts at new challenges.<\/p>\n

Nanoleaf will still be a smart lighting company<\/p>\n

One area of smart lighting he is still excited about is making it more accessible to AI. All of Nanoleaf\u2019s products have open APIs, and Chu is keen to eventually open-source the code. \u201cThat is the direction that technology is going. With our lighting products and with most smart home products, the more open that you can make it, the more compatible with AI it can be,\u201d he says. Allow the user to customize their lighting to exactly what they need, he says. \u201cThat\u2019s really the power of the internet of things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chu\u2019s enthusiasm for the next big thing is understandable for the CEO of a tech company. For tinkerers, developing new ways to control their smart lights with AI can be a fun side project<\/a>. But Nanoleaf\u2019s existing customers probably want the company to just focus on innovating its ecosystem and bringing new features and functions to its app.<\/p>\n

The smart home is undergoing a major evolution in the face of AI and in the wake of Matter \u2014 a standard that, when successful, makes connected devices interchangeable. For companies like Nanoleaf, that means differentiation matters more than ever. I\u2019m not convinced that building AI companions<\/a> and wellness gadgets is the way to go here, but at least Nanoleaf is thinking big.<\/p>\n

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