Nest Raises $80 Million in Funds to Continue Smart Thermostat Venture

Thermostat provider Nest Labs Inc, according to tech blog Gigaom, has recently raised $80 million to continue its growth in the thermostat market. It’s reported that Google (News - Alert) Ventures is behind the generous funding as well as a new investor, Venrock. Nest labs was launched in 2011, and since then has been perfecting its thermostat.

The company has been shipping between 40,000 and 50,000 thermostats per month with a large percentage of them going abroad to Europe. Thermostats produced by Nest are sold in stores such as Best Buy (News - Alert) and Lowes and it has been projected that by summer the company could reach a rate of one million thermostats being shipped to homes and businesses. 

The Nest smart thermostat is such a hot ticket item because its designed and developed by former Apple (News - Alert) executives including Tony Fadell who developed several generations of the iPod and the iPhone. Alsom the thermostats are said to cut consumers home energy consumption by 20 to 30 percent.  

Their newest model of their smart thermostat was released last year in October, and this new version is slimmer as well as compatible with 95 percent of cooling and low voltage heating systems in the United States.

The Nest thermostat connects to a Wi-Fi network thus enabling remote control features and consumers can then adjust the schedule or change the temperature from the Nest website, an iPad, iPhone, or Android (News - Alert) applications. The mobile apps are an easy way for owners to control the household temperatures while being away on vacation or just from another room where a thermostat is not located. The thermostat will even let its owner know when its time to change the air filter and provide them with information on how long it takes to heat up or cool down the house.