Fans of invisible smart locks are dealing with some rough news today. Recent reports show that the parent company of Level Lock just fired most of its staff, leaving many users wondering about the future of their home security setups. While the manufacturer claims everything will keep running as usual, the sudden exit of the main engineering team and co-founders paints a very different picture for the popular brand.
The parent company folds the smart lock maker into Kwikset
The Verge shared that Assa Abloy, the massive corporation that bought the startup in 2024, decided to lay off the majority of the Level workforce. The company plans to fold the remaining business right into its Kwikset brand, another lock maker it already owns. This big shakeup means the original founders, John Martin and Ken Goto, are out, along with most of the people who actually built the hardware and software.
Despite the heavy cuts, Assa Abloy claims the brand is not totally shutting down. A tiny crew will stick around to finish up a specific lock made for apartment buildings, and the company insists product support will continue. However, anonymous sources inside the business suggest the parent company might not be fully ready to handle the current customer base over time.
Local smart home features will work, but cloud services might not
For current owners, there is no need to panic and swap out your locks right away. The best thing about these devices is how they work directly with Apple Home and Matter. Because basic locking and unlocking happen locally over your own home network, they do not need the company’s cloud servers to function.
The real unknowns hover over the more advanced features. Handy tools like auto-unlock, the official mobile app, and instant door status updates all rely on the company keeping its online servers running smoothly.
If Assa Abloy ever decides to shut down those servers, users would lose those extra features. For now, the locks remain a solid choice for home setups, but the lack of an engineering team makes future updates seem very unlikely.
