Alex Hawkinson

Founder & CEO BrightAI

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Alex Hawkinson is the founder, chief executive and chairman of BrightAI, a Palo Alto company that puts sensors on the physical assets modern life depends on — water systems, power equipment, commercial HVAC, waste operations, pest control traps — and runs the resulting telemetry through AI models so that faults are predicted rather than discovered. He is best known for an earlier version of the same idea aimed at homes: he co-founded SmartThings in 2012, led it through Samsung’s roughly $200 million acquisition in 2014, and stayed until 2018. BrightAI is the deliberate inversion of that experience. Hawkinson has said the pandemic clarified how antiquated the essential services underneath daily life are, and BrightAI spent four years building in stealth, reaching $80 million in revenue without outside capital before raising a seed round in late 2024 and a $51 million Series A in July 2025.

Career Highlights

• Founder, CEO and chairman of BrightAI, co-founded in 2019 with Nathan Hanks, Douglas Burman and Robert Parker; the platform emerged from stealth in November 2024 with more than 250,000 sensors deployed and seven large enterprise customers across six verticals.
• Bootstrapped BrightAI to $80M in revenue before taking any venture money, then raised $15M from Upfront Ventures (November 2024) and $51M in a Series A co-led by Khosla Ventures and Inspired Capital (July 2025), bringing total funding to about $78M.
• Co-founded SmartThings in 2012 and served as its chief executive through Samsung’s acquisition for roughly $200M in 2014, remaining with the company until 2018.
• Director of Latham Group, Inc. (Nasdaq SWIM) from the company’s April 2021 IPO until his resignation from the board effective 21 February 2024, a departure the company’s 8-K states was not the result of any disagreement with management.
• Chief Product Officer of ReachLocal, Inc., per his February 2012 Form 4; he had joined in 2010 as General Manager, Digital Presence.
• Chairman of SMB:LIVE from 2005 and its chief executive from 2009 until 2010, and chief executive of Apptix Corporation from 2002 to 2005 — both, per ReachLocal’s S-1, businesses selling hosted and digital-presence services to small and mid-sized companies.

Professional Journey

Hawkinson’s career has a consistent shape: take a category of technology that large customers already understand, and sell it to the segment everyone else finds too fragmented to serve. At Apptix from 2002 he ran a provider of hosted messaging and collaboration for small and mid-sized businesses. From 2005 he was chairman of SMB:LIVE, a digital-presence and reputation-management company, taking over as chief executive in 2009. ReachLocal acquired that business, and Hawkinson arrived there in 2010 as General Manager for Digital Presence; by the time of his February 2012 Form 4 he was the company’s Chief Product Officer, an officer of a Nasdaq-listed firm.

SmartThings, founded in 2012, was the break from selling to businesses. It made the connected home tractable for ordinary buyers — a hub, a set of cheap sensors, and an open developer platform — and did it early enough to define the category. Samsung acquired it in 2014 for around $200 million, and Hawkinson stayed on for another four years, leaving in 2018. He has described the intervening period as a search for where connected devices could do more than convenience: the consumer smart home worked, but the problems were small.

BrightAI followed in 2019, co-founded with Nathan Hanks, Douglas Burman and Robert Parker. The pandemic supplied the answer to what it should focus on. “In the pandemic, that downtime, sort of really made you think about what are the really important services that the modern life depends on,” Hawkinson told TechCrunch, “As you look at those, it’s sort of shocking how antiquated they are in many cases.” The company chose to go horizontal rather than pick a single vertical — a slower path he defended on the grounds that limiting the market would leave “so much untapped potential.”

The company then did something unusual for an AI infrastructure startup: it stayed quiet and took no money. BrightAI launched its platform in stealth in 2023, and by the time it emerged in November 2024 it had deployed more than 250,000 sensors, served seven large enterprise customers in HVAC, waste management, power and other sectors, and reached $80 million in revenue entirely from customers. Upfront Ventures funded a $15 million seed at that point, and in July 2025 Khosla Ventures and Inspired Capital co-led a $51 million Series A.

Alongside operating, Hawkinson served on public-company boards. He joined the board of Latham Group, the pool manufacturer, at its April 2021 Nasdaq listing, sat on its nominating and corporate governance committee, and resigned as a Class III director in February 2024.

Education

Carnegie Mellon University

Bachelor of Science, Cognitive Science