Connected homes and home automation seems to be the way of the future. Our appliances are starting to get smarter and there are various efforts from a variety of different companies, such as Nest, who are hoping to make our homes a lot more smarter, and we guess to a certain extent, more efficient too at performing day-to-day tasks which might seem mundane.
Well it looks like Microsoft could have an interest in creating the connected home of the future. The Redmond company has recently announced that they will be partnering up with American Family Insurance (AFI) to help create a startup accelerator that will focus on home automation. This was announced during the Global Startup Day which was held in San Francisco.
According to Steve Guggenheimer, the corporate VP of developer experience and evangelism at Microsoft, “Home automation is ripe for startup innovation. We are working closely with American Family Insurance to provide a one-of-a-kind experience for entrepreneurs in our accelerator. Startups accepted into the program will gain critical industry insight to build companies with the potential to have an enormous impact on our lives.”
American Family Insurance is also expected to provide those participating in its accelerator with homeowner knowledge that young companies, such as startups, might not be able to gain access to. It is an interesting move by Microsoft, although not altogether surprising given Microsoft’s HomeOS initiative, and we can’t wait to see what will be the result of Microsoft’s efforts.
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