How we are organized
The Open Home Foundation is a tax-exempt, non-profit
Stiftung (“foundation”) based in Switzerland. It is funded by
commercial partner fees and donations.
The foundation has no financial obligation to its partners. Funding
and support flow in a single direction: from partners to the Open
Home Foundation. Commercial partners, however, are allowed to create
products that license Open Home Foundation brands. They may also
collaborate with Open Home Foundation employees to ensure general
interoperability, and alignment with the foundation’s guiding
principles.
Apollo Automation and Nabu Casa are the Open Home Foundation’s
current commercial partners. Each is contractually required to
contribute a majority of its profit from selling licensed products
to supporting the Open Home Foundation This funding allows the Open
Home Foundation to support more than 50 full-time employees,
collaborate on external projects, and make donations to causes
consistent with its principles.
How you can support our work
Contribute to an open source project
There’s no need to go through the Open Home Foundation to
contribute code, translations, designs, or
documentation
to any of our projects. Or even a project that isn’t ours—as long
as it is maintained in the service of smart home privacy, choice,
and sustainability.
Keep an eye out for our open calls for priority projects that need
extra help. Or support a maintainer’s work directly through a
GitHub sponsorship page, Ko-fi, or any other sponsorship platform.
Purchase something from our partners
Instead of a small donation, we encourage you to subscribe to Home Assistant Cloud or purchase official hardware. Purchasing official Home Assistant or ESPHome products from our partners will help fund their partner fee, which pays the salaries of people working on Open Home Foundation projects and collaborations
SubscribeGet in touch about donating
If you’re a large organization interested in making a significant donation to the Open Home Foundation, one of our projects, or in support of smart home privacy, choice, or sustainability—take a look at our 2025 donation tiers and get in touch. Imagine what we can accomplish together!
Get in touchBoard members
We are driven by our ideals. Our aim is to support open source, open standard, smart home projects to the benefit of our community.
Paulus Schoutsen
President
Pascal Vizeli
Treasurer
J. Nick Koston
Member
Trevor Schirmer
Rotating member (commercial partner)
Leadership
Franck Nijhof
Lead of Home Assistant
Chair of Leadership Committee
Guy Sie
Lead of Marketing
Jean-Loïc Pouffier
Lead of Product & UX
Marcel van der Veldt
Lead of Ecosystem
Jose Martin-Corral
Chair of Back Office
FAQ
Why this structure, and why Switzerland?
How best to support the future of the open home was a question without a definitive answer. Our founders looked for inspiration from other organizations defending our digital rights. They eventually settled on moving ownership of projects to a non-profit Stiftung (“foundation”) supported by for- and non-profit partners. For a low-overhead, international organization like ours, this structure represented the best chance to accomplish the foundation’s goals.
Our founding board chose to locate the Open Home Foundation in Switzerland because of the country’s strict adherence to the rule of law, long history supporting privacy and democracy, and fierce political independence. Switzerland is forward-looking when it comes to intellectual property, reverse-engineering, and the use of APIs for interoperability.
Are there other models, and other countries, which would have worked? Of course! But after long consideration we believe we made the right choices to pull off this pretty radical, pretty idealistic project.
Does a partner profit when I buy something from it—even if all I care about is supporting the Open Home Foundation?
Yes. Absolutely.
This is one of the compromises involved in the structure we’ve chosen, the size of our organization, and the rules that pertain to how we are allowed to handle funding.
In the case of Nabu Casa, our inaugural partner, this isn’t a significant change from how things worked before the creation of the Open Home Foundation. It only formalizes the relationship. Newer partners, like Apollo Automation, have the same obligations.
(And hey, if you’re still not sure you want to support a for-profit partner to support us—don’t. Contribute directly to one of our projects, or a project that matches our smart home ideals—or yours! That’s totally in line with our ethos. This idea is bigger than just us. Or any single project.)
Is Nabu Casa’s relationship to the Open Home Foundation unique?
Short answer: No.
Longer answer: Mainly in terms of its track record.
Nabu Casa is a for-profit company. But since it was founded in 2018 by some of the same people now involved with the Open Home Foundation, it has stewarded the cause of Home Assistant without commercializing the open source project itself. For years, a significant portion of Nabu Casa’s revenue was used to pay the salaries of people working on numerous open source, open home-aligned projects.
This relationship changed slightly in 2024 when Home Assistant and other projects were transferred to the Open Home Foundation. Nabu Casa became a partner to the Open Home Foundation, contributing a majority of its revenue to the foundation. In 2025, every employee working on the foundation projects moved from Nabu Casa to the Open Home Foundation.
Will there be additional partners?
We hope so!
At the end of 2025, Apollo Automation became the second commercial partner of the Open Home Foundation, adding diversity and sustainability to our cause.
We continue to welcome other organizations with a proven track record, and a willingness to commit their resources, to consider partnering with the Open Home Foundation.