Stuart Lombard, Founder & CEO, Ecobee. Photo credit: Stephen McCarthy / Collision / Sportsfile, licensed under Creative Commons

Ecobee, a Canadian upstart that makes smart home devices, is in discussions to go public via a reverse merger with blank-check firm Canaccord Genuity Growth II Corp, according to a report [paywall] from Bloomberg. According to Bloomberg, Ecobee is looking to go public in a deal that’ll give the company an initial valuation of $490 million on the public markets as well as add tens of millions of dollars to its balance sheet. Canaccord Genuity Growth II Corp, the intended mergee, is a Canadian blank-check firm that raised about C$100 million ($75 million) in its public market debut last year. It’s now reported to be looking to raise even $50 million more to fund a merger deal with Ecobee.

Ecobee as a company was founded over a decade ago. It makes and sells a variety of smart home products including cameras, thermostats, sensors and the likes. As a private company, Ecobee has raised about $150 million in funding from a group of investors, among them Thomvest Ventures and e-commerce giant Amazon, via its Alexa Fund. 

As the story goes, Ecobee was founded in 2007 by entrepreneur Stuart Lombard who had a desire of reducing his family’s carbon footprint. To do so, he set out to create home automation products that are designed to conserve electrical energy, starting with a thermostat. After seeing success with thermostats, Ecobee has over the years branched out into other product lines such as security cameras, motion sensors, and air filters.

Ecobee overall is one of Canada’s most capitalized upstarts, with about $150 million in funding raised since its inception. The company’s most recent financing round was a C$47 million ($36 million) Series C raised in 2018.

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