Nanoleaf, the company that made its name with those funky modular light panels, is rebranding itself away from smart lighting and toward embodied AI, robotics, and red light therapy wellness gadgets. According to The Verge AI, CEO and cofounder Gimmy Chu confirmed the shift in a candid interview, telling the publication that “the smart home is getting kind of boring” and that the company has at least three embodied-AI products shipping this year.
The Verge AI reports that the lineup will include an AI-powered toy, a desk companion, and a robotic microcontroller, with one product tied to early childhood development. Chu was coy on specifics, but the framing is clear: Nanoleaf wants to put intelligence into hardware that does something useful, not just bolt ChatGPT onto a speaker.
Why a lighting company is running from lighting
The trigger is Matter. The open standard Nanoleaf helped pioneer is doing exactly what it promised, and that’s the problem. Ikea now sells full-color smart bulbs for around $10 that work on every platform. Chu calls it commoditization, and he’s not wrong. When every bulb talks to every hub, the premium for being “smart” collapses.
Nanoleaf was an early Thread and Matter adopter, one of the first to ship a Thread bulb compatible with Apple’s HomePod Mini back in 2020. Now that the connectivity plumbing is sorted, Chu wants to redirect that R&D firepower somewhere with fatter margins.
The embodied AI bet
This matters beyond Nanoleaf. Embodied AI, models running on hardware that perceives and acts in the physical world, is becoming the consumer-electronics narrative of the year. Every hardware brand staring down commoditization is asking the same question: what can a physical product do that a $10 commodity version can’t?
Chu’s answer:
- AI toys and desk companions targeting kids, learning, and creativity
- Robotics as a longer-term play (he admits it’ll take time)
- Open APIs across the existing lighting line, with eventual open-sourcing so AI agents can control lights directly
That last point is the smartest piece of the strategy. If LLM-driven home automation takes off, the lights that expose the cleanest APIs win. Nanoleaf already has them.
Wellness as the cash cow
While the AI products incubate, red light therapy is paying the bills. Nanoleaf’s red light therapy mask, launched in 2025, became one of its top sellers. Four more devices are coming this year with heating and vibration features. The Verge AI notes that consumer red light therapy sits somewhere between science and hype, but Nanoleaf’s pitch is price: LED supply-chain expertise undercutting US competitors.
What it signals for the industry
Nanoleaf’s pivot is a preview of what’s coming for every smart-home brand that built its moat on connectivity. Once Matter finishes flattening the protocol layer, differentiation has to come from somewhere else, AI behavior, form factor, wellness, or vertical integration with software.
Expect more of this. Hue, Govee, Wyze, and the rest are watching the same commoditization curve. The companies that survive the next two years will either own a unique experience layer or own a category outside lighting entirely. Nanoleaf is hedging with both.
Whether AI desk companions and red light wands are the right bets is genuinely unclear. What stands out here is the willingness to admit the core business is about to get squeezed and to act before the squeeze arrives. More details at the original source on The Verge AI.