Ambient computing provides seamless engagements between smart devices and their users with finely tuned experiences intended to make people’s lives easier, while reducing energy consumption and costs. Ambient intelligence, as Amazon’s Senior Vice President, Devices and Services, Dave Limp, describes it, learns your preferences and habits in order to produce intuitive results. Because of its ability to learn and make modifications and predictions based on repetitive personal behaviors, ambient intelligence operates in the background, while the individual goes about their life. At the Alexa Fund we are excited to help pioneering startups develop smart devices and technologies that can be managed using voice commands and contribute to the evolution of ambient intelligence.
Let’s say you were out grocery shopping or working in an office all day and you are heading home in your car. You may be listening to music playing from your smart phone through your car’s sound system. As you near your home, the apps on your smart phone that manage various Smart Home systems and devices recognize your location and begin to adjust energy settings to your preferences. Your smart thermostat turns up the heat or air conditioning to your preferred temperature prior to your arrival. Smart lights come on and illuminate your driveway and your home’s interior. As you enter, the music you’ve been listening to now plays through your home system precisely where it left off in the car. Your smart refrigerator alerts you to re-stock milk and eggs and your smart TV has recorded your favorite programs while you were out. Smart tech even fed your dog on time and watered your garden as soon as the sun went down. All of this takes place without you having to do a thing. That’s what makes it smart and ambient. Ambient intelligence flows with your activities through the smart devices that are learning to sync with how you live so they can help you live better. We’d like to share some exciting Alexa Fund startups with you that are doing exactly that!
Span – Replace your home’s old electric panel with an advanced smart panel that allows you to install electric appliances, convert to solar, and add an EV fast charger and battery back-up without having to upgrade your service. According to Span, their product gives you full control of the individual circuits of your home through a mobile app and Amazon Alexa, and allows you to understand where power is being used and coming from (grid, solar, storage) so that you can save on your energy bills, support clean energy, avoid outages.
Orro – This smart lighting system device and home intercom can be managed using Alexa voice controls, a mobile app, or from a touchscreen panel to turn on/off or dim/brighten lighting. Orro adapts its settings using motion and sound sensing that monitor and adjust according to your behaviors. Orro says it uses its sensors to make predictive adjustments based on room activity where an Orro device is installed. If no one is present in a room, Orro can dim or turn off the lights to save energy. It learns your lighting preferences through use – and soon it is able to adapt and respond to repeated household activities without being ‘asked.’
Syntiant – Syntiant’s AI at the edge technology is breaking new ground in machine learning for devices big and tiny. According to Syntiant, their trailblazing AI dramatically increases battery life, privacy and responsiveness, while diminishing infrastructure costs. Syntiant isn’t something you purchase, it’s something that your earbuds, smart watch, medical device, mobile phone, laptop or Smart Home device may come equipped with that radically elevates its intelligence, functionality, and capabilities.
The Alexa Fund believes experiences designed around the human voice will fundamentally improve the way people use technology. To that end, we provide up to $200 million in venture capital funding to fuel voice technology innovation by supporting entrepreneurs who have amazing voice-powered experiences and visions.
