What happened to Latch? Beautiful locks, broken numbers, and the new DOOR.

A door lock is an unlikely object of desire. Latch made a convincing attempt. Its hardware looked considered, its app looked approachable, and its whole presentation suggested that entering a building deserved better than a beige box and a forgotten PIN.

Then came the stock-market debut, the unreliable accounts and the disappearing value. Today, the business calls itself DOOR. The interesting part is how much can change while the company on the paperwork stays the same.

First, it made the lock matter.

Founded in 2014, Latch sold a coherent idea: access for an entire building, with hardware and software designed to work together. Apartments were the centre of the story. A resident’s front door, the lobby and shared spaces could belong to one system. The sales pitch had an obvious audience: developers who wanted their buildings to feel modern. ^[2]

The design was more than a good slide in a fundraising deck. Thomas Meyerhoffer’s Latch C received a 2018 Good Design Award Best in Class distinction in Australia. Its circular face and restrained form made a lock look like a consumer product someone had bothered to design. That was a useful change in an industry seldom accused of vanity. ^[1]

Look at the early hardware and then at the current DOOR site. The ambition is recognisable: make building technology feel simple, calm and desirable. The presentation had something of Apple about it: quiet surfaces, careful proportions, very little visual noise. ^[1][13]

Illustration

Design worth looking back at.

Soft curves. Quiet surfaces. A more considered entrance.

A very expensive entrance.

By January 2021, Latch said it had booked more than 300,000 units across over 35 states. It also said one in ten new US multifamily apartments built in 2019 had Latch. Bookings, however, were not the same as recognised revenue. Still, the proposition had travelled well beyond a design studio. ^[2]

That month, a Tishman Speyer-sponsored SPAC agreed to take Latch public, valuing its equity at $1.56 billion after the deal. A SPAC is a listed shell that takes a business public through a merger. The deal included $190 million in private investment, with funds managed by BlackRock and Fidelity among the investors. ^[2]

The combination closed on 4 June 2021. Latch’s subsequent registration statement described roughly $453 million in net additional cash from the transaction. The company had sold a future of recurring software income attached to physical doors. Investors had paid generously for the view. ^[3]

Then the numbers stopped behaving.

In August 2022, Latch disclosed an investigation into how it recorded revenue and other reporting issues. Later that month, it said its 2021 and first-quarter 2022 accounts could no longer be relied upon. Its initial explanation: sales terms had not reached the right people internally. ^[4]

In plain English, the conditions attached to a sale matter. Shipping a box does not settle whether a customer must pay for it, may return it, or has actually taken control of it. Revenue recognition is where those inconvenient details become numbers. Latch’s internal process had failed to capture relevant terms. ^[4]

The repair took years. The restatement was completed in December 2024; DOOR says it became current with SEC reporting in February 2026. By then the public-market story had already come apart. ^[10][14]

The doors stayed. The value didn’t.

Two dated prices give a sense of the damage. Latch reported a $12.96 closing share price on 23 June 2021. The Real Deal reported a $1.68 close on 1 August 2023. That is a fall of about 87% between those observations, not a peak-to-trough calculation or a claim about today’s price. ^[3][5]

Nasdaq suspended trading on 10 August 2023; its formal delisting announcement followed on 20 March 2024. The shares subsequently traded over the counter as LTCH. Losing an exchange listing did not switch off the locks, or automatically cancel every share. It did leave shareholders with a very different investment from the one celebrated at the listing. ^[6][12]

The regulator’s version.

On 1 October 2026, the SEC issued a settled cease-and-desist order against Latch. It said annual revenue had been overstated by approximately 107% for 2019, 39% for 2020 and 50% for 2021, measured against the corrected amounts. These were not rounding errors. ^[7]

The SEC found breaches of anti-fraud rules and financial reporting safeguards. Latch settled without admitting the findings, apart from accepting the SEC’s jurisdiction. The $1 million civil penalty was payable in four instalments. The SEC also acknowledged Latch’s cooperation and efforts to put things right. ^[7]

The penalty goes to the US Treasury. It was not a refund of the SPAC-era dream. ^[7]

DOOR presented the settlement as the end of its major legacy matters. It also reported resolutions of four shareholder lawsuits. The last was agreed in principle, which is still a step short of final court approval. ^[14]

Same company. Different people at the door.

The leadership changed before the branding did. Co-founder Luke Schoenfelder resigned as CEO in January 2023; Jason Keyes became interim CEO. In July, Latch bought Ring founder Jamie Siminoff’s Honest Day’s Work, paying with roughly 29 million shares and $22 million in promissory notes. Issuing shares to acquire a business changes the ownership mix. It does not create a clean break with the existing company. ^[8][9]

Dave Lillis succeeded Keyes in February 2025. Siminoff’s later advisory arrangement ended in May 2025, according to company filings. Siminoff was part of the attempted reset. By 2026, he was no longer involved. ^[10][11]

The June 2026 quarterly report makes the continuity clear. The public parent was still Latch, Inc. Its wholly owned operating subsidiary had changed its name from Latch Systems, Inc. to DOOR Systems, Inc. in August 2025. The business adopted the DOOR brand. The rebrand did not create a new public company. The old filing history—and the old shareholders—came with it. ^[11]

The part worth keeping.

There is still an operating business. For 2025, the company reported $70.1 million in total revenue, including $22.1 million from software. DOOR now presents access control as part of a wider building-management platform. That is a commercial direction, not proof that the turnaround is complete. ^[12][13]

For anyone choosing guest-access technology, this is the useful tension. Product design matters. So do support, financial reporting and the ability to keep serving a building years after installation. A lock can outlive the pitch that sold it.

Latch helped make access control something worth looking at. Its history gives the industry a reason to look a little further.