If you have any Insteon smart home devices, you might have noticed they suddenly stopped working in April. Since then, we've learned the company went out of business, suddenly shutting everything down — servers and backend included — and posting a public statement after the fact. You might have been equally surprised to find out today that, after all that stuff, your Insteon devices are suddenly back online. No, Smartlabs didn't suddenly figure out how to keep Insteon in business. Instead, the company was bought out — and it wasn't a big tech giant, if that's what you're thinking.

According to a blog post on the official Insteon website, a "small group of passionate Insteon users" got together to acquire Insteon. Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that Insteon servers are actually back online, and as a result, if you have any Insteon products, they should begin working properly again — not all online features will work right now, but the company is actively working on it. The new owners also say that they're committed to "responsibly rebuilding the Insteon business."

We don't have any more info than that, sadly. The company didn't get bought out by another tech giant or company, but rather by a group of individuals that are, as per the official story, just customers of Insteon that want the company back, citing their passion for Insteon's "amazing dual-mesh technology and highly configurable products." We also know that the new CEO is a man named Ken Fairbanks — looking at his LinkedIn, we can see that he doesn't have any previous ties to any tech company and has a background in business development and strategy, with a special focus on IoT stuff. So it definitely looks like the company is in good hands — a very needed reassurance given that we're talking about smart home gadgets.

We're definitely interested to see the direction this will take through the next few months. Right now, though, Insteon gadgets are back online — and that's really all most customers care about for now.