Enlighted: Fixture-level lighting sensors and building IoT, now winding down under Siemens

Overview

Enlighted was founded in 2009 in Sunnyvale, California, as commercial lighting moved to LED. Its idea was to put a small computer in every light fixture: a sensor that dims and switches that one luminaire on its own, and also reports occupancy, daylight, temperature and power use to a central server. By August 2014 VentureBeat reported that the sensors covered 45 million square feet of commercial space and that the company had raised $55.4 million from venture investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Intel Capital.

The fixture-level grid set it apart from room-level occupancy controls. The same network that saved lighting energy could count people in a space, feed occupancy to the HVAC system and, with Bluetooth, locate tagged equipment. Siemens announced the acquisition on 23 May 2018, describing a multi-sensor platform with its own network and software, and said Enlighted would run as an independent, wholly owned subsidiary of Siemens Industry, Inc. Its later documents carry the name of Building Robotics, Inc., a Siemens company.

That story ended in 2025. In an April 2025 business update Enlighted said it would wind down its operations, including its core lighting and value-added IoT offerings, after a review with Siemens. Trade press reported that new orders stopped immediately and that Siemens aimed to finish by the end of its fiscal year on 30 September 2025. Enlighted Connect, the software layer for workplace apps, continues inside Siemens Smart Infrastructure and is now sold as Building X space and workplace management. For a buyer today the profile is mainly a record of an installed base and of what that base can still exchange with other systems.

Offering

Sensors, controls and gateways

The hardware layer was a smart sensor paired with a control unit in each luminaire, driving the fixture over 0-10 V dimming. The Manage specification sheet shows the range: a micro sensor for flush mounting in pendant fixtures, a high-bay sensor, a ruggedised sensor for parking structures and vapour-tight fittings, a room control switch, and wireless gateways that connect each floor to a PoE switch. Sensors carry their own processor and memory and store lighting schedules, occupancy behaviour, daylight response, zone control and trim settings, so the company says lights keep responding to the space if the gateway drops out.

Manage

Enlighted Manage was the server and web interface for configuring lighting profiles, device management, energy reporting and outage reports. The Enterprise Enlighted Manage appliance (EM-3-01, a Dell server certified by Enlighted) handles up to 18,000 sensors, or 10,000 with BACnet, and keeps lighting data for up to 36 months. It also generated Title 24 acceptance-test documents and ran automatic demand response.

Applications

• Space: occupancy and utilisation heatmaps, motion trails and time series by portfolio, building, floor or space type, with a Tableau Web Connector included in the Space licence.
• Where and Location Services: real-time location of Bluetooth Low Energy tags and badges read by the lighting sensors. In October 2023 Siemens reported new machine-learning models taking location accuracy above 98 percent, and a Touchless Workplace app for occupant temperature requests.
• HVAC control: occupancy by zone sent to the building management system so heating and cooling follow actual use, described in the Automated HVAC Control sheet.
• Enlighted Connect: the workplace-experience layer, now Siemens Building X space and workplace management, which outlives the lighting business.

Hardware was sold through lighting agents, luminaire makers and installers; software was licensed per sensor and per BACnet point.

Technology

Architecture

Each sensor samples occupancy, ambient light, temperature and fixture power 65 times a second and makes its own occupancy and daylight decisions, filtering data before it goes on the network. Sensors talk wirelessly to gateways; the gateways sit on a PoE network that connects to the Manage server, which has separate Ethernet ports for the gateway network and the corporate network. The specification describes the server as Linux-based and reached through Chrome or Edge, and the BACnet diagram shows it either as an on-premises appliance or hosted in Enlighted's cloud.

Interfaces

• BACnet/IP: the Lighting BACnet interface exposes group and individual points to any BACnet building management system, including dimming, emergency override, demand response level, occupancy status and consumed energy for lighting and plug loads. One server supports up to 35,000 BACnet points with the licence.
• REST APIs: Manage answers GET and POST requests with XML or JSON. The Enlighted APIs on the Siemens developer portal group them as Occupancy APIs, Location Services APIs (REST and streaming, with a deep-learning location engine) and Energy and Environment APIs for fixture configuration, energy, BACnet health, emergency lighting and demand response.
• Tableau: Space data exports at 15-minute aggregation, not as raw sensor streams.
• Bluetooth: sensors include Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy beacons that Manage can switch on or off.

Security

The specification states AES 128-bit encryption on the wireless link and TLS with a 2,048-bit certificate and SHA-256 on TCP/IP, and that sensors cannot identify a natural person. The Manage server stores user names, login events, IP addresses, floor plans and occupancy data. The website footer shows an AICPA SOC for Service Organizations badge without naming the report type or scope; no ISO 27001, IEC 62443 or penetration-test summary is published.

Customers

Siemens Energy, Parsons Works

At the Parsons Works site in Newcastle, a 20,538 m² manufacturing facility, 1,529 fittings across 15 office and production areas each received an Enlighted sensor. The company reports savings above 5.6 million kWh a year and over 1,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas avoided annually. The customer shares the Siemens name with Enlighted's owner, so this is not an arm's-length reference.

Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust

At the Thomas Linacre Centre the trust replaced 904 fluorescent fixtures with 612 LED luminaires carrying Enlighted sensors and added the Space and Where applications for utilisation analysis and asset location. Enlighted reports a predicted 80 to 85 percent cut in lighting energy spend, about £38,000 a year, with a four-year payback. The project won the Verdantix 2020 Smart Building Innovation Award for hospital optimisation.

Earlier references

In 2014 VentureBeat listed Google, AT&T, Barclays and Genentech among the customers, and in 2015 the platform was named in the Sustainia100 list of sustainable solutions. The 2022 HVAC solution sheet quotes California State University, Dominguez Hills reporting a 65 to 80 percent cut in energy spend where the system was installed.

Partners building on the data included Tagnos, which used the location feed in a hospital orchestration platform, and Zan Compute, which used occupancy to schedule cleaning. Every savings figure here is a single-project number published by Enlighted or its owner.

Markets

Enlighted sold mainly into commercial offices, healthcare, manufacturing and higher education. The 2022 solution sheets claim installations in 60 countries, and the support page lists business-hours phone support for the United States and Canada, Europe, and the Middle East and Asia, with toll-free numbers in the United States, India and France. Its compliance guides cover North American codes: ASHRAE 90.1-2019, California Title 24 and the Washington State energy code, a sign that the United States remained the core market.

The channel ran through lighting. Sensors were embedded in luminaires by manufacturers and installed by electrical contractors. In February 2024 Siemens, Enlighted and Zumtobel Group announced a partnership to build Enlighted sensors into Zumtobel and Thorn luminaires as prefabricated bundles for new construction and retrofit, aimed at commercial buildings, higher education and hospitals, and the portfolio was listed on the Siemens Xcelerator Marketplace.

The April 2025 wind-down was first communicated to lighting agents and OEM partners, with existing projects handled case by case and warranty commitments honoured. Building X space and workplace management, the successor to Enlighted Connect, is sold through Siemens' own building software channels, not through the lighting trade.

Company

Founding and funding

Enlighted Inc. was founded in 2009 and was based in Sunnyvale, California in its venture years. It raised $20 million in April 2013 and a further $20 million in August 2014, its fourth round, bringing the total to $55.4 million according to VentureBeat. Memoori puts total funding above $80 million across 11 rounds before the sale.

Siemens ownership

Siemens' Building Technologies Division announced the purchase on 23 May 2018, with closing expected in the third quarter of 2018 and no price disclosed (Construction Dive reported the same terms). Specification sheets from 2022 and 2023 give the address as 3979 Freedom Circle, Santa Clara, and the copyright holder as Building Robotics, Inc., the Siemens subsidiary that also publishes the Comfy workplace app.

Wind-down

On 18 April 2025 Enlighted said that, after evaluation with Siemens, it would wind down its operations. EdisonReport quoted Siemens Buildings as exiting areas where growth had not met expectations, and Enlighted's own memo, as reported, cited a failure to reach profitable growth despite significant investment. Enlighted says a dedicated team inside Siemens fulfils existing software, service and warranty commitments, and that Enlighted Connect remains available and supported through Siemens Smart Infrastructure. No end-of-support dates for sensors, gateways or Manage have been published.