The new company will produce for the U.S. market Hide, the retractable electrical outlet that integrates Alexa, signaling the entry of smart speakers into the outlet industry.
Italy Innovazioni S.p.A. is an engineering research company listed on the Euronext Access+ list in Paris, whose core business is the development of innovative technological solutions and the exploitation of intellectual property assets in many fields.
Jiangsu Shushi Technology Ltd. is one of Amazon’s main partners in developing smart home devices designed for the Alexa system.
After a year-long technology and market assessment, the two companies have formed 3Reality Hide Inc. the U.S.-registered company through which the Italian IP Company (which holds 51 percent) and the Sino-American manufacturer will jointly develop, produce and market Hide, the innovative retractable electrical outlet that, uniquely in the world, integrates an Amazon Alexa smart speaker inside.
The project is the result of an initiative by Italy Innovazioni, which presented the first prototype of its Hide in Alexa version at the 2019 edition of CES in Las Vegas. Hide is the socket that hides the plug inside the wall by means of an elegant cover that, thanks to the engineering done on the product, can accommodate any smart home device inside.
The idea appealed to Amazon’s U.S. team, which, seizing the great market opportunities offered by the Italian intuition, activated the synergy between Italy Innovazioni and Jiangsu with the aim of making this functional and technological innovation become a real product. With the establishment of NewCo, the project now enters its implementation phase. The new outlet is scheduled to be launched by 2021 with a range of three versions in a market, the U.S., where nearly 90 million smart speakers and 130 million electrical outlets were sold in 2020.
Giorgio Rende, president and chief executive officer of Italy Innovazioni S.p.A., who will also serve as chairman of the board of NewCo, said, “Hide is an idea that is already a reality in Italy and Europe and now, thanks to Amazon’s trust and attunement with our partners in Jiangsu, it will be able to land in the U.S. with a very high profile of technological development. Hide will thoroughly mark the smart home and voice assistant industry.”
Nanfang Hu, CEO of Jiangsu and NewCo, shares this same spirit and says, “Hide is a perfect fit with our smart home expertise. Jiangsu’s core business is the development of devices that turn voice assistants into hubs for building automation, and Hide is the perfect system to be able to deploy voice-controlled technology in every room of the home and office to provide more comfort but also more control over energy consumption.”