Just to clarify, this is also not accurate and there are lots of sources proving this is a misconception and it has been hashed over and debunked many times. Some people who don’t understand how ODM manufacturing works think Xiaomi and Wyze are the same company or owned by the same company or that Wyze bought cameras from Xiaomi. None of that is accurate. Though it would be funny, considering Wyze has SUED Xiaomi in the past and won, which would be ridiculous if they were the same company or owned by the same company, because what stupid company would allow wasting court and lawyers’ fees to have themselves sue themselves.
What you are referring to with the Wyze cam V1 or V2 is also a misunderstanding. In early days, Wyze and Xiaomi did not ever source things from each other. Xiaomi does leverage some of the same ODM suppliers as Wyze does (note there is a difference between ODM and OEM).
Honestly, the majority of companies that make physical products, particularly IoT, tend to partner up with a 3rd party supplier and do “ODM” manufacturing. Some of them will pay the supplier for an exclusive right to it, while others don’t. Believe it or not, even Apple, Samsung, Amazon, and many, many more rely on 3rd party ODM suppliers to make their devices, rather than doing it all themselves. It’s highly normal in the tech industry.
For example, the iPhone is actually manufactured by Foxconn, not “Apple” and Samsung Smartphones and Tablets are actually manufactured by companies like Wistron and Foxconn too. Amazon uses TONS of different ODM suppliers for their various things.
Wyze is no different. They have multiple different ODM partners for various Wyze devices. I have even made threads in here listing many of their suppliers. Not all of Wyze’s suppliers or partners are from China either. With some of them, Wyze has helped design the products themselves, and some of them they have exclusive rights to the design so others can’t use them, but others, they don’t care if other companies use the same or similar design because Wyze maintains a huge advantage in all the added firmware features, etc that they personally add to it in-house that they others don’t have, as well as keeping everything they do on US servers, etc and as a 100% US owned company. As already mentioned, famous example of ODM having similarities is the Wyze V2 camera vs the Xiaomi camera that looked identical to it. The Wyze one was FAR superior with tons more features and a lot better because Xiaomi basically just kept the stock firmware, while Wyze made it tons better for several years and still cheaper. So despite the fact that they both used a similar ODM supplier (Hualai), Wyze was tons better.
Roku and Wyze have a totally different relationship/partnership where Wyze provides them with their smart home tech…Wyze isn’t their ODM, but there is a different kind of partnership there that is similar in some ways.
I do find it funny that a lot of people who argue about brands don’t realize that in some cases they’re both supporting the same supplier, like with iPhones vs Samsung devices often both coming from Foxconn/Han-Hai. Same with a lot of HP vs Dell both coming from Foxconn/Han Hai 
The underlying subtext of such fandom are funny to me because both are often actually being made by the same company/supplier and in a way they’re both agreeing with each other about liking the real supplier (not the face of it) without even knowing it.
The majority of tech providers are doing some kind of ODM from a supplier, but the public-facing brand gets all the credit. Instead of the real supplier. R&D and ODM partnerships are a lot different from what most of the public thinks.
Having said that, Wyze has multiple times addressed that they are not a owned by any Chinese Company. Not even all their suppliers are Chinese ODMs.
Wyze is not a Chinese company, they are American owned and operated. They do indeed have some Chinese ODM suppliers for their physical products, but they customize their firmware AND run things through their servers in the US, and store data in the US. The same cannot be said for Chinese companies like Aosu. Wyze is not subject to Chinese law and the Chinese government cannot require them to give secret or backdoor access to Wyze servers. That is not to say that have never contracted with companies in other countries for various 3rd party services…like the majority of medium to large tech companies.
Wyze is no more a Chinese company than Apple, Dell, HP, Samsung, most cell phones, and half the Fortune 500 USA Tech companies that also do ODM manufacturing through Chinese suppliers. Having a hardware supplier out of China is not a security risk and does not make one a Chinese company. OEM and ODM supplying is the norm in the tech world. Pretty much everybody does it to some degree.
Even that click-bait article writer rando admitted there is no evidence any information was shared with 3rd parties.
Wyze has long been known in the past to contract with different 3rd parties for different things like using ThroughTek (a common company used for IoT authentication), but never to send them person info, just streaming authentication (my understanding is that Wyze has mostly switched to doing things through WebRTC now). Or using Braze or Segment for their analytics integration to figure what parts of their app are working or confusing to users, what they can improve, etc. They’ve been fairly open about a lot of that and they are not selling anyone’s private information or anything. Even in this article, the writer admits that Wyze did clarify that they were not giving out anyones’ personal information. Claims to the contrary would need to be presented with some kind of evidence, of which, there isn’t any.
Wyze does do business all over the globe and have admitted that in some cases they change the “Ping” from using the main search engine here (Google) to using Asia’s main search engine to gauge online probability. This is a common practice. But they will also have some IP address for various places depending on various factors. Users have seen US, Canadian, even EU IP addresses recently, one of the PM’s recently said that for their users in Asia, they usually try to use Asian IP addresses (especially for the ping). So there is some variation.
I’m unaware of any real evidence that Wyze gave info to the Chinese government. I know they use TUTK/ThroughTek (a Taiwanese company) commonly used for IoT solutions in the tech industry for connectivity, etc. Throughtek is also used by Amazon, Google, Sony, Microsoft, Samsung, and more because they are not a security threat. I believe this is where a lot of the misinfo or misunderstanding comes from though. ThroughTek owned IP addresses are fine…well…unless said person is ready to give up completely on Google, Amazon (including AWS and all the companies that use it…which even includes big names like Apple), Microsoft, etc. too.
Again, I don’t care if someone uses any Chinese company for their smart home. I even have some myself. I also support competition. I think it’s good for everyone. I am happy different people are happy with different options that fit their needs of what they were looking for. There are pros and cons with every choice. I have, and enjoy cameras from multiple brands. I admit I am a big fan of what Wyze stands for and the values they’ve decided to take upon themselves, but I am not blind to their issues and I criticize them where I feel it is warranted. I recently did so here in this post for example. I do try to make my criticism constructive. But yeah, despite not being an employee (nor having aspirations to ever be one), I have met all the founders/owners and top leadership in person. I like their vision. I like a lot of things that make them different from other companies including the core values they’ve adopted for themselves. I don’t hate other companies, but I believe Wyze has it in them to be great. I don’t think ANY group of humans is perfect, let alone individuals, but I LOVE what Wyze tries to do and the passion and out of the box thinking they have for many things and how they push for disruptive affordability, low profit margins, being friends with users, making great tech affordable to everyone and coming up with ways to improve on these things, and interesting hints some of the employees have said in public threads.
Anyway, No shade on you wanting to leave Wyze. I respect that different things fit people’s needs differently and am very glad there is a lot of competition. As I said, I also have cameras from multiple other companies, including Chinese ones, so I’m not against that either. Just calling a spade a spade as far as privacy concerns go. As for selling your devices, I’d recommend considering looking at doing it on eBay. Since Wyze has such low-profit margins (sometimes negative profit margins on some of their hardware like the OG cams), they often retain their value really well and often sell for close to the cost on there anyway. IF I was ever going to sell my Wyze stuff, I’d probably do it on eBay or another similar marketplace because they tend to sell reasonably high that way. But whatever you do is all good. Best of luck either way. 