Level Lock’s Cloud Features at Risk After Assa Abloy Layoffs
What You Need to Know
- Assa Abloy laid off most Level employees and merged the brand into its Kwikset division in 2024.
- Level locks function locally with Apple Home and Matter, so basic locking works without company servers.
- Auto-unlock, mobile app, and real-time status updates depend on Level’s cloud infrastructure and may disappear.
- Level’s co-founders and bulk of engineering team have departed, making future updates unlikely.
Level Lock’s parent company, Assa Abloy, has laid off most of the Level workforce and is folding the brand into its Kwikset division. The co-founders, John Martin and Ken Goto, are among those who have left, along with the bulk of the engineering team that built both the hardware and software behind the locks.
Assa Abloy acquired Level in 2024. The Swedish conglomerate already owns Kwikset, so the absorption is less a rescue than a quiet consolidation. A small remaining team will reportedly finish a lock product aimed at apartment buildings, and the company insists support will continue, though anonymous insiders suggest Assa Abloy may not be fully prepared to service the existing customer base long-term.
For current owners, the immediate situation is less dire than the headlines suggest. Level locks work directly with Apple Home and Matter, meaning basic locking and unlocking happen locally over a home network rather than through company servers. That core functionality stays intact regardless of what happens to the business.
The features that depend on Level staying online
The more useful daily features are a different story. Auto-unlock, the mobile app, and real-time door status updates all depend on Level’s cloud infrastructure remaining operational. If Assa Abloy eventually pulls those servers, owners lose those capabilities with no obvious path to recovery.
What makes this sting is the product’s core appeal. Level built locks that hide entirely inside a standard deadbolt, with no visible exterior hardware to signal a smart lock is present. That design required genuine engineering investment, and the team behind it is now largely gone.
Future firmware updates or new feature development looks unlikely without a dedicated engineering team in place. The locks work today, and for straightforward Apple Home setups they will likely keep working for some time. Whether that holds a year or two from now depends entirely on decisions being made inside a corporation that just demonstrated where Level sits in its priorities.
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