keyless-entry
(8)
Yale and August U.S.: The smart lock that let you keep the key
August put a motor on the inside of the door and left the familiar key outside. Paired with Yale, that small concession became a business in deciding who gets in, when, and how.
KeyMe Locksmiths
KeyMe Locksmiths is a New York-founded technology company that has rebuilt the roughly $12 billion locksmith trade around robotics and computer vision. Its self-service kiosks - more than 7,000 of them inside retailers like Kroger, Walmart, IKEA, Menards and Rite Aid - use trained neural networks to scan, store and duplicate house keys, car keys with transponders, and RFID fobs in minutes. Alongside the kiosks, KeyMe runs a nationwide dispatch network of professional locksmiths for lockouts, re-keying, lock installation and repair, plus a retail media network that turns its kiosk screens into advertising real estate. The company has raised roughly $200 million across eleven rounds since 2012.
Grant Walter
Grant Walter is the Chairman, CEO and President of KoreLock, a Denver-based IoT technology company that sells turnkey embedded smart lock platforms to the lock and access-control industry. Rather than making locks or software, KoreLock builds the printed-circuit-board module, firmware and cloud that let any manufacturer ship a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connected lock. Its patent-protected, gateway-free Wi-Fi direct technology sits inside tens of thousands of locking devices across 65+ countries. In 2023 Walter was named a Security Industry Innovator for that WiFi-ready platform.
CANDY HOUSE
CANDY HOUSE, Inc. is the consumer-hardware company behind Sesame, the retrofit smart lock that mounts over an existing deadbolt with adhesive tape and turns a smartphone, fingerprint, card, PIN or face into a key. Founded in 2014 by Stanford engineer Jerming Gu and famous for a 2015 Kickstarter that raised about $1.4M, the company built an open ecosystem around SesameOS - locks, touch and face readers, a coin-sized Matter hub, sensors and finger robots - aimed at making smart-home access affordable, rental-friendly and developer-open.
igloo (igloohome / igloocompany)
igloo (legally igloocompany Pte Ltd, known to consumers as igloohome) is a Singapore-founded smart access company building keyless, offline-capable smart locks, padlocks and keyboxes plus the cloud software to manage them at scale. Born out of two founders' frustration with handing over physical keys to Airbnb guests, the company's patented algoPIN/algoPass technology generates time-bound PIN codes and digital keys that work without WiFi at the lock. Today igloo serves both consumers and enterprises - through its iglooworks and iglooaccess platforms - across 80+ countries, syncing with Airbnb, Vrbo and hundreds of property-management systems.
Anthony Chow
Anthony Chow is the CEO and co-founder of igloo (igloohome), a Singapore-built smart access company whose Bluetooth locks open without Wi-Fi using time-sensitive PIN codes. What began as an Airbnb host's annoyance over after-midnight key handoffs became a company that has issued more than 20 million digital credentials, sold locks in 90-plus countries, and even sent a batch of locks to space. A data scientist turned hardware founder, Chow trades on a simple, stubborn idea: a world without keys.
Jerming Gu
Jerming Gu is the Taiwanese founder and CEO of CANDY HOUSE, the company behind SESAME, the smart lock that clamps onto an existing deadbolt and turns a smartphone into a key. He started the company as a Stanford mechanical engineering master's student in 2014 with co-founder Jongho Shin, then turned a 3D-printed dorm-room prototype into a Kickstarter phenomenon that raised roughly $1.4 million in 2015. After a decade building a dominant smart-lock business in Japan - including funding from ITOCHU and a strategic alliance with lock maker MIWA - he relaunched CANDY HOUSE in the US and Canada in 2025 with a lineup spanning SESAME 5, face recognition, palm-vein biometrics and Matter-compatible hubs.
KoreLock
KoreLock is a Denver-based IoT smart lock technology company that gives lock manufacturers and access control providers a turnkey, patented platform - embedded firmware, custom PCBAs, mobile and web apps, and cloud APIs - to turn ordinary offline locks into Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connected devices. Rather than competing with lock makers or software companies, KoreLock positions itself as the interoperability bridge between hardware and access control software, with technology already embedded in tens of thousands of devices across 65+ countries.