Smart home company Vivint raises $100M co-led by Peter Thiel and Solamere Capital
Peter Thiel and Mitt Romney invested $100 million in a company that wants to be the Apple of smart homes — Vivint, a smarthome company based out of Provo, Utah, has raised $100 million in its first round of venture-capital funding.
Context & Ripple Effects
Vivint, the Provo-based smart home company, has taken its first venture money — $100 million co-led by Peter Thiel and Solamere Capital, with Mitt Romney also participating — after building its business outside the VC system, and it frames the ambition as becoming 'the Apple of smart homes.' The round pairs two Utah-linked names (Solamere, Romney) with Thiel, signaling that high-profile individual investors are willing to underwrite consumer smart home hardware at scale.
The category this round bets on has since kept raising: Brilliant's $21M Series A for its $199 hub, Level Home's $71M emergence from stealth with a retrofit smart lock, SmartRent's $60M Series C for property-manager automation, and Hellman & Friedman taking control of SimpliSafe at a reported ~$1B valuation. Vivint's 2016 round now reads as an early marker of a sustained capital cycle into the space.
First-order effects
- Vivint gains $100M of growth capital to push toward its 'Apple of smart homes' positioning, while Thiel, Solamere, and Romney convert their names into a credibility signal for a hardware-and-services bet most VCs had avoided.
Second-order effects
- Follow-on capital validates the thesis competitively: startups attack adjacent slices of the same home — Brilliant's hub, Level Home's dead-bolt lock sold through a Walmart partnership — forcing full-stack players like Vivint to defend the whole-home claim rather than any single device.
- Private equity enters as an alternative buyer: Hellman & Friedman's controlling stake in SimpliSafe at a reported ~$1B gives security-focused smart home companies an exit path that doesn't depend on going public.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, smart home consolidates into two tracks — venture-backed platform aspirants like Vivint competing on integrated ecosystems, and PE-rolled-up security specialists — with high-profile early investors effectively de-risking the category for institutional money.
The trend: Consumer smart home is maturing from a niche hardware bet into a sustained capital cycle, drawing venture rounds, celebrity investors, and private equity buyouts across hubs, locks, and security systems.