By Sara Johnson 

The parent company of PolyScience Culinary has acquired ChefSteps, which produces the Joule immersion circulator. Breville Group, an Austrailian company, announced on July 16 that it has acquired the Seattle-based ChefSteps following recent layoffs.

Last week, ChefSteps CEO Chris Young told Michael Wolf of The Spoon: “April was a very tough time. Had to let go a lot of my colleagues, stabilize the business, take time to figure things out. But when I made [a] list of who I think was the right company to go forward with, Breville was at the top of my list. So when they reached out, I was really happy. It made it really easy. We have a shared DNA, how we think about products, how we think about innovation, that we’re fundamentally there to serve our community of cooks.”

Big day today for ChefSteps and Joule. https://t.co/cOekenXzty

— Chris C. Young (@ChefChrisYoung) July 16, 2019

This latest news follows Breville’s acquisition of PolyScience Culinary in 2014, which brings two major players in sous vide immersion circulators under the same roof. While PolyScience caters to professionals with products like the CHEF Series Commercial Immersion Circulator, the Joule—released in 2015 and featuring an accessible $179–$199 price point—is designed for home chefs. In 2016, PolyScience and Breville released The Control Freak, an induction heating system that, as Sous-Vide reported, “offers incredible accuracy and specificity, allowing you to set an exact temperature for either the surface of a pot or the liquid inside of it.”

According to Wolf’s interview on The Spoon, the future relationship between ChefSteps and Breville is still yet to be determined. “We’ll absolutely see Joule go forward,” Young told The Spoon. “There is a lot of eagerness to see our roadmap go forward. Will everything go forward? I have no idea,” Young continued, noting there are several projects that the company is “very close” to being able to ship to their community later this year: “I am quite excited about that.”