Brilliant, Backed by $40M Financing Round, Sets Sights on MDU Market

Smart home company Brilliant is stepping up efforts in the multi-dwelling unit (MDU) space, CEO Aaron Emigh told us Tuesday, from the National Apartment Association’s 2021 Apartmentalize conference in Chicago. The company had the first public unveiling of the Brilliant Command Center, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for managing smart technology at scale in MDUs.

With the SaaS platform, Brilliant includes a suite of third-party integrations, including building access control and Resideo leak detectors. ButterflyMX technology enables tenants to see and communicate with visitors who ring their apartment; Salto’s smart locks help property managers monitor, automate and control building access; and Entrata’s access system allows managers to configure vacant units to save energy, streamline resident onboarding and move-out processes, grant and revoke access to an apartment and enable property tours remotely.

Brilliant’s edge in the MDU space is a focus on the user experience for tenants, said Emigh, citing the company’s start on the residential side. “Having the Brilliant controls in the walls is unique and makes technology extremely accessible.” That’s especially important in a rental environment, where a renter may not have chosen a particular smart home technology for their apartment: “It’s important that it works smoothly for them.”

For management companies, smart home technology helps them rent apartments more quickly if prospective tenants can easily grasp the benefit of smart home control and what it can do for them, said Emigh. Brilliant’s system has bring-you-own-device capability, so if a tenant with a Sonos multiroom speaker system, for example, can control it via Brilliant’s wall keypad controls and app: “It’s not a totally closed ecosystem.”

Brilliant applauds the efforts of the Connectivity Standards Alliance to democratize smart home technology via the Matter standard, said Emigh. It will open choice for consumers and “build in a baseline of interoperability” across device makers and platforms at the core level, which will help drive consistent experiences for setup, security, and connectivity, he said.

Brilliant is part of the initiative, which Emigh said will spur consumer confidence in an industry that hasn’t built a lot of credibility with consumers. Matter will “break down silos, open up choice, and unlock innovation for all companies in the smart home space,” he said. Brilliant plans to support Matter when it’s available, while continuing to innovate with its system that doesn’t require a hub and integrates with Amazon, Apple and Google platforms for voice and app control.

Brilliant announced Tuesday a $40 million Series B financing round (see 2108310057) led by Next47 and Celesta Capital with participation by Resideo, August Capital, Peak State Ventures, Gaingels and Miramar Digital Ventures. On how it will allocate the funds, Emigh cited Brilliant’s recent traction with new home construction for single-family homes and its emerging MDU business. The product and business model are “working well,” he said: “This is a scaling round for us.” The MDU segment has “quickly become a substantial component of the revenue,” said Emigh, declining to give a percentage. Management companies are starting to have IT professionals on staff as connected technology becomes more prevalent. Each apartment building that adopts a smart home system means “hundreds of apartments. It’s a pretty appealing market for us.”

The Brilliant command center scales to hundreds of apartments and “tens of thousands” for management companies with several properties, Emigh said. To facilitate deployment, an IT staffer can scan a QR code based on the type of apartment, and Brilliant software automatically configures a preselected smart home system for each apartment layout, he said. After initial configuration, managers get alerts when there are problems with a unit, including if the temperature is out of range or there’s a leak, “the single-biggest source of losses in the market.”

A company with 20,000 units under management can save on energy costs from vacant units with smart home control, Emigh said. “If you’re in the Arizona summer or the Minneapolis winter, you can be spending a lot of money cooling or heating those apartments.” Brilliant enables an energy-saving mode while the apartment is vacant, but it also turns on climate control when a tour is scheduled to create a comfortable environment, he said.

The biggest barrier to smart home systems in the MDU space is poor Wi-Fi, said Emigh. Brilliant's smart dimmer switches use Bluetooth mesh technology, so they don’t require Wi-Fi access, but controls for video and online connectivity do require “solid Wi-Fi,” he said. Reliability is improving, he said, at the consumer level and as more homes are being rented with Wi-Fi built in.