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Wyze Labs

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Wyze Labs, Inc.
Type of businessPrivate
FoundedJuly 19, 2017; 7 years ago (2017-07-19)
Headquarters
Seattle, Washington
,
U.S.
Area servedUnited States
Founder(s)
  • Yun Zhang
  • Dongsheng Song
  • Dave Crosby
  • Elana Fishman
CEOYun Zhang
Products
Employees350
URLwww.wyze.com

Wyze Labs, Inc. (formerly Wyzecam), also known as Wyze, is an American technology company based in Seattle, Washington, that specializes in smart home products and wireless cameras. It is a start-up of former Amazon employees.[1][2]

History

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Wyze was incorporated on July 19, 2017, by four co-founders: CEO Yun Zhang, CPO Dongsheng Song, CMO Dave Crosby, and Elana Fishman.[3][4] Wyze released their first product, the WyzeCam v1, on October 24, 2017. Shortly after, the Wyze Cam V2 was announced on February 18, and (due to a hardware defect) started shipping in early April of the same year.[5] On October 24, 2018, Wyze had sold 1 million units of the Wyze Cam.[6]  On January 31, 2019, Wyze announced a $20 million investment from Norwest Venture Partners.[7] In March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, Wyze was on the verge of shutting down. But the company managed to survive the pandemic by reducing the amount of money it originally wanted to raise from 50 million to 10 million, and by adding the Cam Plus subscription plan, among other things.[8] At the end of 2022, Wyze announced 2023 as the “year of the camera”, and released three new cameras as of March 2, 2023[9]

Disputes and security concerns

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In 2019 Sensormatic, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Johnson Controls, sued Wyze, alleging seven patent violations.[10] Wyze prevailed in the lawsuit, as of September 2020.[11][12]

In December 2019, the company acknowledged that a server leak had exposed the details of roughly 2.4 million customers.[13] The company's response included logging all users out of their accounts, requiring all users to reauthenticate.[14]

In 2021, Xiaomi submitted a report to Amazon alleging that Wyze had infringed upon its 2019 "Autonomous Cleaning Device and Wind Path Structure of Same" robot vacuum patent.[15] On July 15, 2021, Wyze filed a lawsuit against Xiaomi in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, arguing that prior art exists and asking the court for a declaratory judgment that Xiaomi's 2019 robot vacuum patent is invalid.[16]

In 2022, security firm Bitdefender announced that Wyze had discontinued WyzeCam v1 because of a security vulnerability that Bitdefender had reported to Wyze three years before, which is an unusually long time for a vulnerability to go unreported to the public. Wyze did not make any public announcement about the vulnerability.[17]

On September 8, 2023, some users reported on Reddit that the web viewer was showing camera feeds that were not their own. A Wyze spokesperson said this was due to a web caching issue.[18]

In February 2024, about 13,000 Wyze home security customers were shown someone else’s home.[19]

References

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  1. ^ "WyzeCam v2 Smart Home Security Camera Review". Gear Patrol. 24 July 2018. Archived from the original on 2019-07-08. Retrieved 2019-07-08.
  2. ^ Farhad Manjoo (6 December 2017). "The Hidden Player Spurring a Wave of Cheap Consumer Devices". NYT. Archived from the original on 8 July 2019. Retrieved 20 July 2019.
  3. ^ Swearingen, Jake (2019-02-12). "How Four Ex-Amazoners Made a Crazy-Good Wireless Cam for $20". Intelligencer. Retrieved 2021-05-21.
  4. ^ "Bloomberg – Wyze Labs, Inc. – Company Profile". www.bloomberg.com. Archived from the original on 2020-09-26. Retrieved 2019-07-21.
  5. ^ "When did camera come out?". Wyze Forum. 2019-02-20. Retrieved 2023-03-02.
  6. ^ "Elana Fishman on LinkedIn: Wyze Cam - One Year Down, One Million Units Sold". www.linkedin.com. Retrieved 2023-03-02.
  7. ^ "Smart home camera maker Wyze Labs raises $20M after startup finds success with low-cost WyzeCam". GeekWire. 2019-01-04. Archived from the original on 2019-07-21. Retrieved 2019-07-21.
  8. ^ The Future of Wyze is Coming (Part 2!), 15 September 2021, retrieved 2023-03-01
  9. ^ Lardinois, Frederic (2023-01-10). "Wyze launches its new $34 pan and tilt security camera". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2023-03-02.
  10. ^ Honovich, John (2019-08-21). "JCI Sues Wyze". IPVM. Retrieved 2021-07-16.(Subscription required.)
  11. ^ "Wyze Secures Complete Victory in Patent Infringement Lawsuit". www.cooley.com. Retrieved 2021-07-17.
  12. ^ Klingensmith, Rob (2021-01-28). "How Wyze Labs Withstood a Competitor's Patent Infringement Lawsuit - IP.com". IP.com - IP Innovation and Analytics. Retrieved 2021-07-17.
  13. ^ Cimpanu, Catalin. "IoT vendor Wyze confirms server leak". ZDNet. Archived from the original on 2019-12-29. Retrieved 2019-12-29.
  14. ^ Wang, Jules (2019-12-27). "Privacy scare leads Wyze to unpair all devices from Google Assistant and Alexa, you'll need to add them back". Android Police. Archived from the original on 2019-12-29. Retrieved 2019-12-29.
  15. ^ Cheng, Isabella (2021-07-20). "Wyze Sues Xiaomi". IPVM. Retrieved 2021-07-21.(Subscription required.)
  16. ^ "Wyze sues Xiaomi and Roborock to invalidate robotic vacuum patent and save its Amazon listing". GeekWire. 2021-07-20. Retrieved 2021-07-22.
  17. ^ Hollister, Sean (2022-03-30). "I'm done with Wyze". The Verge. Retrieved 2022-03-30.
  18. ^ Peters, Jay (2023-09-09). "Your Wyze webcam might have let other owners peek into your house". The Verge. Retrieved 2023-09-10.
  19. ^ Valinsky, Jordan (20 February 2024). "Wyze breach: About 13,000 home security customers were shown someone else's home | CNN Business". CNN.
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