If you've spent any time in the Home Assistant community, you've probably seen the names Open Home Foundation, Nabu Casa, and Apollo Automation come up together. A lot of people are understandably confused about who owns what, who funds what, and how we at Apollo fit into the picture. Let's clear it all up.
What Is the Open Home Foundation?
The Open Home Foundation fights for the fundamental principles of privacy, choice, and sustainability for smart homes. And for every person who lives in one. It does this by supporting the development of open-source projects, and open connectivity and communication standards.
The foundation owns and governs over 250 open-source projects, standards, drivers, and libraries, including many of the tools the smart home community relies on every day. Some of the most well-known projects under the foundation's ownership include:
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Home Assistant - the world's most popular open-source home automation platform
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ESPHome - open-source software installed on ESP-based smart home devices, including all Apollo sensors
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Music Assistant - open-source smart home music and streaming management system
By placing them inside a non-profit foundation with strict governance rules, the projects are shielded from corporate buyout, commercial meddling, and the risk of becoming abandonware. As Home Assistant became the top open-source project on GitHub by contributors in 2024, with over 21,000 people contributing to the core alone, the importance of that protection only grows.
So What Is Nabu Casa?
Nabu Casa is a commercial partner of the Open Home Foundation, which means it contributes a majority of its profits from selling official Home Assistant products to supporting the foundation.
Today, Nabu Casa focuses on building and maintaining products that make Home Assistant easier to use. Their lineup includes Nabu Casa Cloud, which makes remote access and voice assistant integration simple without sacrificing local control, as well as a growing range of official Home Assistant hardware. That hardware includes the Home Assistant Green, a plug-and-play home automation hub, the Connect ZWA-2 Z-Wave antenna, the Connect ZBT-2 Zigbee/Thread antenna, and the Voice Preview Edition, designed to bring local voice control to the open home. Together, these products lower the barrier to entry for new users while keeping everything local, private, and open.
Where Does Apollo Automation Fit In?
At the end of 2025, Apollo Automation became a commercial partner of the Open Home Foundation, alongside Nabu Casa – only the second company to hold this distinction in the foundation's history.
Like Nabu Casa, Apollo Automation contributes a majority of profits from selling licensed ESPHome products to the Open Home Foundation. This is not a casual sponsorship or a marketing arrangement. It is a formal, binding commercial partnership that helps fund Home Assistant, ESPHome, and the broader open-source ecosystem now and in the future.
As part of the partnership, Apollo co-founder Trevor Schirmer serves as a board member of the Open Home Foundation, representing the commercial partners’ perspective.
For us, this is a full-circle moment. Apollo Automation was built entirely on ESPHome and Home Assistant. Without ESPHome's firmware and Home Assistant's platform, we would have stayed two guys tinkering in a basement. The community's feedback helped us grow from Saturday assembly sessions in Versailles, Kentucky, into a manufacturing operation. Supporting the foundation behind the ecosystem that made us possible felt like exactly where we should be.
Apollo's History with the ESPHome and Home Assistant Community
Even before our partnership with the foundation, Apollo Automation has been deeply embedded in the ESPHome and Home Assistant communities since we started in 2023.
We were the first company to bring ESPHome-based devices into the Works with Home Assistant certification program, blazing a trail that demonstrated ESPHome hardware could meet the rigorous standards required for official certification. Products in the Works with Home Assistant program are tested in-house by the foundation team to ensure they work seamlessly out of the box, and companies joining must commit to long-term support and firmware updates.
We are also members of the Made For ESPHome program, with almost all of our sensor lineup carrying official ESPHome certification.
Our development process has always been community-driven. We open-source our firmware and CAD files, engage directly with the community, and run monthly livestreams where we show behind-the-scenes R&D and take questions. The features in our sensors were shaped by the people who use them, and that is not going to change.
Building the First Official ESPHome Hardware
Apollo Automation is taking on a role that has never existed before: we are building the first official ESPHome-branded hardware.
Just as Nabu Casa builds official Home Assistant-branded products (like the Home Assistant Green, Connect ZWA-2, and Connect ZBT-2, and Voice Preview Edition), Apollo will be designing, engineering, and manufacturing hardware that carries the official ESPHome brand. A majority of the profits from these ESPHome-branded products will be contributed to the Open Home Foundation.
Our partnership with the foundation focuses on three objectives:
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Funding for Open Home Foundation project development - supporting the continued innovation of ESPHome, Home Assistant, and the broader open-source ecosystem
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Hardware that showcases what ESPHome can do - demonstrating the real-world potential of open-source firmware in polished, production-quality devices
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Inspiring the maker community - showing that ESPHome is not just a hobbyist tool but a framework for serious hardware products, and encouraging other makers to build on this platform
We are not leaving our Apollo-branded products behind. We still own every sensor we make, and will continue to design, engineer, and manufacture our own products in Versailles, Kentucky. The ESPHome hardware line is an addition, not a replacement.
A Clear Summary of Who Does What
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Open Home Foundation - Swiss non-profit. Owns and governs 250+ open-source projects including Home Assistant and ESPHome. Funded by commercial partner fees and donations. No one can buy these projects from the foundation or the foundation itself.
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Nabu Casa - The foundation’s first commercial partner. Funds the foundation through Home Assistant Cloud subscriptions and Home Assistant hardware sales. Builds official Home Assistant-branded products.
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Apollo Automation - The foundation’s second commercial partner. Funds the foundation through official ESPHome device sales. Building the first official ESPHome-branded hardware. Co-founder Trevor Schirmer sits on the foundation’s board as a commercial partner representative.
What This Means for You
Every time you buy an official ESPHome product, built by Apollo, a portion of that purchase is contributed to the Open Home Foundation, which funds infrastructure, events, community support, and of course the team developing projects like Home Assistant and ESPHome. It is one of the most direct ways to financially support the open-source ecosystem.
The foundation’s structure also means that Home Assistant, ESPHome, and the other projects it owns are permanently protected. No company, including Apollo or Nabu Casa, can acquire them or change their open-source nature. The community built these tools, and the foundation exists to make sure they stay part of the community forever.
We're proud to be part of this ecosystem and excited about what the ESPHome hardware line will mean for the community. More details on those products are coming. In the meantime, if you have questions about our partnership or how any of this works, come find us on Discord or reach out any time.
Learn more at openhomefoundation.org.
Apollo Automation designs, engineers, and manufactures privacy-first, locally-controlled smart home sensors in Versailles, Kentucky. All products feature 100% local control with no cloud dependencies or subscriptions required. Apollo is a Works with Home Assistant partner, Made For ESPHome member, and official commercial partner of the Open Home Foundation. Learn more at apolloautomation.com.
