Alex Hawkinson is the founder and CEO of Brightai, who leads the mission of awakening critical infrastructure, transitioning from responsive action to proactive. Alex has 25 years of experience in IoT, AI, SaaS and cloud-based technologies and leverages his expertise to transform the industry with smart, visionary solutions to redefine resilience and efficiency.
Prior to Brightai, Alex founded and led Smartthings, a revolutionary IoT platform that reshapes the connected home landscape and is known as the “father of the Internet of Things” in the technology industry. Under his guidance, SmartThings became the global standard, supporting more than 1 billion connected devices before passing Samsung’s acquisition in 2014 and promoting an ecosystem of 250,000 developers.
Brightai enhances critical infrastructure management by moving from traditional reactive approaches to proactive AI-driven operations. The company addresses the challenges of aging systems, working with owners and operators to increase productivity, optimize capital efficiency and support sustainability. Brightai leverages advanced AI and autonomous technologies to mitigate risks, enhance system resilience and adapt to future infrastructure.
Can you share the story behind the founding of Brightai? What prompted you to focus on transforming key industries with physical AI?
My journey began in 2012 when I founded Smartthings, one of the first IoT platforms to make homes smarter, safer and interconnected. We aim to simplify life with seamless collaboration equipment. This experience opened my eyes to more opportunities: most basic services in the world – water, energy, electricity, food, logistics, transportation, and more external Our home. The same principles of connectivity and intelligence can change critical infrastructure in the physical world. With Brightai, we will expand this vision across eight verticals (water, electricity, gasoline, transportation, renewable energy, waste management, pest control, HVAC and critical home services). We bring connected home models into systems that power our cities and industries, creating a smarter and more efficient way to maintain our critical systems.
What does the term “physical AI” mean to you? Why do you think the trends to watch in 2025?
For me, “physical AI” brings intelligence to the physical world, which empowers AI’s predictive power to industries facing obvious challenges such as aging infrastructure, inefficiencies and labor shortages. It creates a digital layer where it becomes “smart” through sensors and AI-driven insights like pipes, poles, and machinery.
Traditional infrastructure management relies on routine access and manual inspections, with 50-80% of the costs associated with manual and truck rolls. This inefficient and unsustainable approach costs $4.5 trillion in infrastructure management every year. Physical AI replaces this with real-time monitoring, active maintenance and significant cost savings.
How does your experience with intelligence affect your approach to building Brightai and addressing challenges in your infrastructure?
SmartThings shows me the power of using data and devices to solve real-world problems at scale, but it also tells me that the key to success lies in simplicity and accessibility. Technology should be authorized, not intimidating. At Brightai, we apply this problem by creating solutions that integrate seamlessly into the industry, helping teams prevent problems rather than responding to them.
Smart people also taught me the value of long-term thinking. After the acquisition through Samsung, the company has been expanded to more than one billion connected devices, which has enhanced the importance of a solid foundation in technology and user trust.
In stealth mode, Brightai achieved impressive revenue growth in stealth mode. What strategies or factors do you think contribute to this success?
Our revenue is the result of a centralized strategy. We prioritize building strong customer relationships and really understanding the problems they are facing so that we can create the right solutions. This enables our customers to trust and trust our technology before we provide our products. I believe that this product market fit can be achieved before seeking external funds.
Furthermore, it’s all about having the right team and our collective expertise plays a role. The lessons I learned from building a sense of intelligence, our leadership team also brings experience from Rivian’s establishment of autonomous systems, Microsoft’s enterprise scalability, and META’s AI advancement. We have formed a unique group to address the challenge of applying AI to the physical world at scale, and we attribute our success to the efforts of our team.
With over 250,000 sensors deployed, how does Brightai collect and leverage data to make real-time decisions and prevent failures in key industries?
We have deployed sensors in over 50,000 locations, more than the total number of Starbucks or McDonald’s stores, which are the eyes and ears of critical infrastructure, collecting data from difficult to reach high-risk environments. This data flows into our AI-driven platform state OS, which uses multi-model models to analyze and predict potential issues before upgrading.
Can you provide examples of how your platform can transform industries such as water and energy from reactive management to active management?
A key example is our partnership with Azuria Water Solutions, a leader in pipeline rehabilitation. Azuria faces obstacles such as labor shortages and limitations of manual inspections, which often lead to incorrect measurement of pipeline conditions. We renovated Azuria’s system using advanced Brightai sensors, which enables autonomous robots to navigate pipelines, evaluate their status and determine the minimum input problems for humans. The goal is to improve aggressive programs by leveraging digital dual pipelines and improve productivity and quality of rehabilitation and management services, while also improving employee retention as the integration of Edge AI and Robotics makes these efforts more exciting and less stressful.
What role does the country’s OS platform play in infrastructure data that has made previously inaccessible?
We like to call it invisible visible. The state OS compiles real-time data, which is processed by a multi-modal AI model to identify patterns, detect exceptions, and predict potential failures. These insights are delivered directly to the field team through intuitive dashboards and alerts, allowing them to act quickly and confidently. Instead of wasting time and energy, these teams can start a new day by looking at the data, they know exactly what issues need to be solved.
How do Brightai’s automated drones and wearables improve inspection processes and worker safety?
Our drones are equipped with sensors and powered by a status operating system platform to safely and reliably monitor assets such as power poles, ducts and water systems even in the most remote and most difficult to access websites. For example, a single drone flight can check over 50 poles compared to a few poles that are typically covered in manual flights. This level of automation can reduce inspection costs by 30 times while improving productivity and coverage. Our wearables enable hands-free operation and improve decision-making in the field, enabling workers to act at the speed of machines. Both technologies significantly improve workers’ safety by minimizing the need for high-risk activities such as climbing poles, entering narrow spaces or operating in hazardous environments.
Your platform has built a “EBITDA gap” for traditional enterprises. Can you explain this concept and how Brightai is implemented?
“EBITDA CHASM” refers to the challenge of modernization actions that do not sacrifice profitability. Brightai bridges this gap by driving efficient operations to reduce capital expenditure and OPEX while promoting customer retention and growth. Our platform enables innovation to deliver direct value, reduce costs and strengthen market share. With Brightai, companies can revolutionize their industries while steadily increasing their profitability.
How do you view the evolution of physical AI over the next five years, and what role do you envision Brightai playing in this transformation?
Over the next five years, physical AI will transform the industry by bridging the gap between the physical and digital worlds. As it evolves, the technology will become more integrated, intuitive and extensive, transforming static infrastructure into dynamic self-monitoring systems to solve problems immediately. Our vision is to increase the productivity, capital efficiency and sustainability of all our essential services and infrastructure, enabling industries of all sizes to leverage the power of physical AI. This technology will democratize advanced capabilities, allowing industries of all sizes to use the capabilities unique to billion-dollar businesses.
Thank you for your excellent interview and hopefully learn more readers should visit Brightai.
