 | |
| Type of business | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | July 19, 2017 |
| Headquarters | , |
| Area served | United States |
| Founder(s) |
|
| CEO | Yun Zhang |
| Products | |
| Employees | 350 |
| URL | www |
Wyze Labs, Inc. (formerly Wyzecam), also known as Wyze, is a U.S. company based in Seattle, Washington, that specializes in smart home products and wireless cameras. Wyze Labs is a small start-up, formed by former Amazon employees. [1] [2]
Wyze was incorporated on July 19, 2017, by the four co-founders: CEO Yun Zhang, CPO Dongsheng Song, CMO Dave Crosby, and Elana Fishman. [3] [4] Wyze released their first product, the WyzeCam v1, on October 24, 2017. Shortly after, the Wyze Cam V2 was announced on February 18, and(due to a hardware defect) started shipping in early April of the same year. [5] On October 24, 2018, Wyze had sold 1 million units of the Wyze Cam. [6] On January 31, 2019, Wyze announced a $20 million investment from Norwest Venture Partners. [7] In March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, Wyze was on the verge of shutting down. But the company managed to survive the pandemic by reducing the amount of money it originally wanted to raise from 50 million to 10 million, and by adding the Cam Plus subscription plan, among other things. [8] At the end of 2022, Wyze announced 2023 as the “year of the camera”, and released three new cameras as of March 2, 2023 [9]
In 2019 Sensormatic, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Johnson Controls, sued Wyze, alleging seven patent violations. [10] Wyze prevailed in the lawsuit, as of September 2020. [11] [12]
In December 2019, the company acknowledged that a server leak had exposed the details of roughly 2.4 million customers. [13] The company's response included logging all users out of their accounts, requiring all users to reauthenticate. [14]
In 2021, Xiaomi submitted a report to Amazon alleging that Wyze had infringed upon its 2019 "Autonomous Cleaning Device and Wind Path Structure of Same" robot vacuum patent. [15] On July 15, 2021, Wyze filed a lawsuit against Xiaomi in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, arguing that prior art exists and asking the court for a declaratory judgment that Xiaomi's 2019 robot vacuum patent is invalid. [16]
In 2022, security firm Bitdefender announced that Wyze had discontinued WyzeCam v1 because of a security vulnerability that Bitdefender had reported to Wyze three years before, which is an unusually long time for a vulnerability to go unreported to the public. Wyze did not make any public announcement about the vulnerability. [17]
On September 8, 2023, some users reported on Reddit that the web viewer was showing camera feeds that were not their own. A Wyze spokesperson said this was due to a web caching issue. [18]
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iRobot Corporation is an American technology company that designs and builds consumer robots. It was founded in 1990 by three members of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab, who designed robots for space exploration and military defense. The company's products include a range of autonomous home vacuum cleaners (Roomba), floor moppers (Braava), and other autonomous cleaning devices.
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A robotic vacuum cleaner, sometimes called a robovac or a roomba as a generic trademark, is an autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner which has a limited vacuum floor cleaning system combined with sensors and robotic drives with programmable controllers and cleaning routines. Early designs included manual operation via remote control and a "self-drive" mode which allowed the machine to clean autonomously.
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Vivint Smart Home, Inc. is a smart home company in the United States and Canada, and a subsidiary of NRG Energy. It was founded by Keith Nellesen and Todd Pedersen in 1999. In 2012, The Blackstone Group acquired Vivint for more than $2 billion. In January 2020, the company completed a merger and became a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange.
Xiaomi Corporation, commonly known as Xiaomi and registered as Xiaomi Inc., is a Chinese designer and manufacturer of consumer electronics and related software, home appliances, and household hardware. It is the second-largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world, behind Samsung, most of which run on the MIUI Operating system, which is based on the Android operating system. The company is ranked 360th and is the youngest company on the Fortune Global 500.
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Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co., Ltd., often shortened to Hikvision, is a Chinese state-owned manufacturer and supplier of video surveillance equipment for civilian and military purposes, headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. Due to its involvement in mass surveillance of Uyghurs, the Xinjiang internment camps, and national security concerns, the company has been placed under sanctions from the U.S. and European governments.
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Largan Precision CompanyLimited or Largan Precision is a Taiwanese company with its headquarters in Nantun District, Taichung City. The company manufactures optical lens modules and optoelectronic components, which are mainly used in scanners, cameras, digital cameras, multi function product, LCD projectors, phone lenses, rear projection TVs, and optical mice.
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