Florida-based Skyx and Seattle firm Deako are to merge with the goal of leading the smart home, builder and hotel markets with their combined technologies.

In the past five years Deako has shipped over 32 million units of its technologies including its smart home plug-in wall switches, with over $26m in revenues in 2025.

Deako is a technology supplier to more than 50 US builders including DR Horton, Toll Brothers, Risewell Homes, Adams Homes, Maronda Homes, Shea Homes and Schumacher Homes, and is expected to fast track Skyx’s technologies to the builder market.

Skyx is a safe-smart home and AI platform technology company with over 100 US and global pending and issued patents and a portfolio of 60 lighting and home décor web sites. The merger with AI smart home Silicon Valley-backed company Deako combines plug-and-play smart home and AI technologies.

The merger will let Skyx address the smart electronic real estate of electrical outlet boxes in homes and buildings including wall outlets, wall switches and ceiling outlet boxes for smart home and safety products, lighting, ceiling fans and smoke detectors, all with smart home plug-and-play products.

During the past years, Skyx’s safe instant plug-and-play ceiling outlet receptacle has received vote approvals from US building safety standardisation organisations including ten segments in the NFPA-NEC code book and its technology’s specifications received an approval vote by ANSI and NEMA as a standard.

The merger will open the door for Deako’s products into Skyx projects including Marriott and European hotels, and Miami’s $4bn smart city. The merger is expected to increase Deako’s SKU count to the builder, hotel and pro markets fivefold.

The merger should enable cost saving synergies including overhead consolidation in software, accounting, general administration and sourcing, efficiency optimisation.

Deako’s founder and CEO is Derek Richardson, former sales leader in tech companies Blackberry and Cypress. He will remain CEO of Deako (www.deako.com) and will lead Skyx’s growth including to the builder, hotel and pro markets. Deako’s board members include former Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs, former Nest CEO Marwan Fawaz and executive chairman Scott Vertrees.

“Throughout my career, I have been deeply involved in building ecosystems and platforms to integrate diverse capabilities into smartphones and other devices,” said Jacobs. “The merger of Skyx Platforms and Deako brings together two synergistic platforms for the home. To date, the smart home has advanced slowly device by device. Skyx combines its position at the ceiling, its all-in-one smart home hub and AI platform and its safe plug-and-play ceiling outlet receptacle, with Deako’s wall receptacle, intelligent switches and more than 32 million products already shipped into homes. Together they provide the electronic real estate of homes, buildings and hotels, where power, control, sensing and AI intelligence will naturally live. This merger can drive the new standard for safe, smart and AI intelligent homes.”

Steve Schmidt, president of Skyx (www.skyx.com), added: “I strongly believe that our combined plug-and-play platform technologies with vast electronic real estate and endless offerings including home safety sensors, smart home sensors, AI intelligence and much more will be game-changing for the smart home, building and hotel industries.”