Samsung has acquired SmartThings, a home automation startup

Samsung is making a big push into being the center of the smart home today with its acquisition of SmartThings, which allows people to sync up their connected gadgets onto a single smartphone app and hardware hub. The company isn’t releasing the acquisition price, but TechCrunch reported a $200 million pricetag when first caught word of the deal last month. “From the beginning, our goal has been to make a platform every human being could use—and to make every home a smart home,” said SmartThings cofounder and CEO Alex Hawkinson in phone call today. “This will help us reach a massive scale. We saw an opportunity to bring SmartThing’s vision to hundreds of millions of customers.” Founded in 2012, SmartThings told me a few months ago it was currently only in “tens of thousands” of homes, but growing at a quick pace of 20% new installations every month. According to the two companies, SmartThings will operate as an independent company and will be moving from its home base of Washington D.C. over toSamsung’s Open Innovation Center in Palo Alto. The Open Innovation Center acts as an investing arm and startup accelerator for U.S. companies that Samsung is interested in.