Vivint Acquires Cloud Storage Startup Space Monkey
The deal positions Vivint to expand its efforts in the fast-growing Internet of Things (IoT) marketplace.
Vivint has acquired cloud storage provider Space Monkey, which puts data on a networked hard drive in its customer's home. The device links up to all of the other Space Monkey hard drives to become a "distributed cloud."
PROVO, Utah – Vivint has acquired consumer-focused cloud storage startup Space Monkey. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Space Monkey uses a peer-to-peer network, rather than a data center, to offer greater speed, security and cost savings for personal storage, according to a press release announcing the deal.
The acquisition supports the growth and development of the Vivint Sky smart home platform. Vivint recently introduced the Vivint SkyControl panel, which features proprietary cloud technology that learns from homeowners’ behaviors and makes intelligent suggestions to add new levels of convenience and control over the home.
“It’s a natural fit for us to be a part of Vivint’s technology for the smart home,” says Clint Gordon-Carroll, co-founder of Space Monkey. “We look forward to working with Vivint as we continue to innovate and invest in the product.”
Gordon-Carroll and Alen Peacock founded Space Monkey in 2011 as an alternative to data center storage, which requires high power, cooling, infrastructure and bandwidth costs. Space Monkey offers both a local storage and remote network backup for higher levels of data security and redundancy, according to the company.
Space Monkey puts the data on a networked hard drive in its customer’s home, which links up to all of the other Space Monkey hard drives to become a “distributed cloud,” Bloomberg reports. If a personal hard drive ever breaks down, the user’s files are still retrievable on the thousands of other Space Monkey drives distributed around the world.
The Space Monkey co-founders told Bloomberg the company will continue to operate independently to keep building its product and to compete with other consumer-focused cloud players. Space Monkey’s 16 employees will also relocate to Vivint’s offices.
Eventually, plans call to sell the Space Monkey cloud services to Vivint’s customers as well as finding ways of combining the cloud storage with Vivint’s smart home technology.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how storing data fits into the smart home,” Gordon-Carroll told Bloomberg. “Think about storing all the video captured on security cameras.”
Having a physical location offers efficiencies to the consumer, Peacock told Bloomberg. “If you’re recording a video in the home, it’s much faster to transfer that video to another device in the home network than it is to upload thousands of miles away in a data center.”
Most of the latest smart home companies incorporate some element of cloud computing into their product. Video monitoring company Dropcam, which was recently purchased by Google’s Nest for $555 million, offers a $10 monthly cloud storage backup for all the video it collects. Dropcam uses Amazon to store this data, according to Bloomberg.
“As we move into the smart home, we’re suddenly producing prodigious amounts of data,” said Peacock. “The Space Monkey technology can really augment the smart home.”
Space Monkey has raised $2.7 million of venture capital in a Series A round led by Google Ventures in 2012 as well as raising $349,625 in a Kickstarter campaign last year, Bloomberg reports. This is compared to the more than $500 million cloud storage competitor Dropbox has raised in equity financing since its founding in 2008.
Space Monkey’s model is more costly upfront for the company than its competitors, as it has to actually manufacture hardware, according to Bloomberg. By comparison Dropbox rents out Amazon servers.
“Scaling hardware like this is a really taxing challenge,” said Gordon-Carroll.
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