Drop raises $13.3 million to make connected kitchens smarter
Summary
Founded out of Ireland in 2012, the Dublin-based company originally focused on hardware, developing a connected kitchen scale that was sold globally through Apple Stores. This means that beyond Drop’s clients across mobile, web, and voice, it works closely with the technologies required to make smartphones talk to home appliances, including IoT firmware, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. The humble kitchen is now home to all manner of connected devices, including smart faucets that let users start and stop water flow with their voice and exhaust vents with embedded touchscreens. Samsung last year acquired a smart food platform called Whisk, which uses deep learning and natural language processing (NLP) to build an extensive “food genome” that charts the relationships between ingredients and their individual properties. Drop and Whisk have different methods but a similar goal — making recipes and shopping lists work more cohesively with the modern kitchen.