Silicon Labs at 25 and the Future of IoT

I joined Silicon Labs in 2018 with a focus on expanding our IoT business, and as we celebrate the company's 25th anniversary with IoT firmly at the center of our mission, I find myself thinking about where we'll be in another quarter-century. It's difficult to put that kind of time into perspective, but when talking about an area that is changing as quickly as intelligent wireless connectivity, it becomes almost impossible. In just a few short years, we've seen the industry make breathtaking advances and we're starting to realize just what's possible with IoT.

Connectivity Begins with People-First Approach

Harnessing this potential starts with making wireless connectivity that can be easily adopted and scaled, continuing to innovate here will be key to transforming industries, growing economies and improving our everyday lives. One of the areas where we're all seeing this unfold is in the smart home market, which has been gaining momentum over the past few years but recently has been the backdrop of some pretty incredible breakthroughs. We're playing an important role in this acceleration, including taking a leadership role in Matter, formerly known as Connected Home Over IP,(CHIP), which has been convened to promote the adoption of a new connectivity standard that will make connected devices easier to develop. Our developers contributed more than 20 percent of the source code for Matter, and our new solutions leverage Matter to make it easier for consumers to use their devices with all major smart home ecosystems, including Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit and Google. We're also providing the modules, software and development kits behind virtually every available smart home wireless standard. Together we've built the world's strongest IoT ecosystem of technology, design and channel partners.

As a key driver of today's most prevalent wireless standards including Bluetooth, Thread, Wi-Fi, Wi-Sun, Zigbee, Z-Wave, and new connectivity standards like Matter and Sidewalk, we're helping the industry overcome some of the interoperability issues that had been gating factors in the adoption and scaling of wireless connectivity. In turn, we're helping developers to move quickly across different standards and increasing consumer confidence in introducing new products into their lives.

We have a heritage of innovation, from the early days of our radio tuners and RF synthesizers to our entry into IoT. Being able to draw on that culture and history will help deliver the connected devices our customers need to solve global challenges including energy efficiency, economic growth, better health, infrastructure innovation and sustainable cities.

This happens by putting people at the center of everything we do and building meaningful relationships with our employees, customers, partners, investors, suppliers, governments and community. Through this approach, and an obsession with making wireless development easier, we've created solutions that address the most complex IoT challenges: security, interoperability, cost, power, size, storage, scalability and reliability. We are proud of our track record in IoT and couldn't be more excited that this will be 100% of our focus as company moving forward.

While I've only been at Silicon Labs since 2018, the long-term commitment to innovation can be seen everywhere. It's in our core values, it's in the way we work together in and out of the office, and it's in the way we approach new challenges. Thinking about the opportunities unfolding in front of us over the next 25 years is incredibly exciting, but it's also important to remember that will be built on the amazing foundation we established over the first two-and-a-half decades.

This is going to be fun.