I think we've circled 'round to ...wait for it...
"It depends."
Glad we could clear that up for you. 
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I am using hue's matter support (currently in beta) to talk to HomeKit. It works much better than the hue native HomeKit support. I have no way of knowing if/when the hue skill on Alexa will cut over to matter. Amazon chose to use vendor specific skill for matter support, which is odd, since HomeKit doesn't care. I just add accessory, select matter, and pair, and done. I want the same for Hubitat. then my anything that talks matter can talk to hubitat (within reason) without specialized drivers. The Matter protocol matters when it comes to the future of smart homes.
In the case of HomeKit, the automations are local. According to Amazon's Matter development video, their automations would be local too, and that is why Matter will only be supported on their more powerful devices. Thread will only be available on the devices that can also do Zigbee, from what I was watching. I personally think HE is the best matter controller, and HomeKit and Alexa, and other smart speaker / home assistants are better in their role of being assistants -- but Matter is great there, to not have to rely on any one hub/bridge to make things work. Everything speaks directly -- that's what I want to see.
Hopefully Matter can be shoehorned into existing hubs and would love to see thread on the C8. The Matter rollout looks problematic at the moment but as mentioned it's still early.
Wonder how this will all play out with device sharing.. especially curious as to how Hue will deal with their product line and also maybe Apple. It looks like shared devices will only get the baseline/generic capabilities for the most part.
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I've not kept up. The is the C8 due out? With the more or less constant two-figure price of the C7, I am guessing fairly soon.
It depends on your definition of "fairly soon" - I'm sure there is still a ton of work that has to happen on the testing and manufacturing ramp up, distribution etc also still needs FCC approval as well I guess.
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I suspect they are waiting on making it Matter compliant. It may take them some time. I am sure the Hub will be available by the time Matter is really relevant.
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Yeah you see the difficulty the "big" players seem to be having with the initial implementation. Hubitat, Inc might wait on releasing it or just include it down the line with a new hub but suspect development is currently in progress.
Disclaimer: I do not work for Hubitat, Inc or have any inside knowledge, it's just speculation on my part.
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I agree completely.
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I do think there may be an issue that could have HE releasing Matter support sooner than later...at my previous company we referred to "Chooser" and "User" features. Chooser features were related more to customers' purchase decisions, and user features were what customers actually did w/the devices once they took them home. Kind of fantasy "Oh, I could/would do this - how exciting!!" vs. reality "I only really have time or need/want/understand how to do this."
Matter can easily fall more into the chooser category as its promotion heats up across the industry and you see more and more vendors touting it (even if it doesn't really work right yet). HE could look like they aren't current/are missing something if they can't put Matter in their feature list sooner than later.
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The issue right now is negative press. Lots of reports of things not working, frustrating setups etc etc.. Hubitat, Inc could promise Matter support but hold off until the smoke clears.
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I agree and disagree...case in point, I have a friend who has watched my HA activity from a distance for a while. The other day he actually brought up Matter and said he was thinking about getting into HA "now that it's getting better." [eek!] I think there are potentially a lot of people (a lot in HA market terms) who are hearing about Matter via normal "skimming" of press releases disguised as news, and regardless of how good or bad it is they will be making purchase descisions based on it.
And we know how much HE (rightfully) tries to avoid promising things they haven't released yet... 
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I agree - I made an earlier comment about "Matter" becoming a buzzword like "Cloud". However over time + lots of negative reviews by Press & Tech Influencers could rapidly change that. The issue is all the hype and Utopian promises being made about Matter itself before it's release.
If Hubitat, Inc advertises their hub as Matter compatible (with future update) then they could take advantage of the good marketing and avoid the bad press/reviews if things start to go pear shaped. Only the major players seem like they can get away with "doesn't work quite right" for now.
It is a little concerning that there seems to be a lot of incompatibility issues at the start of all this. You'd think the spec would be a little more clear and that there would be some sort of acceptance testing or verification.
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Matter was implemented on select echo devices, HomeKit, and hue hub (opt in beta) and it works great. Definitely not a shoehorned in solution. I do wonder though, once Hubitat supports Matter, will Alexa, google, and other hub integrations (like the new HomeKit one) even have any value.
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I haven’t seen any. Just negative chatter like this. But I have been using it, and I love it.
Was referring to the C7 hub not those others. It would be wonderful if they Hubitat, Inc could retrofit but more likely it will appear on their next gen hub in the future but dunno.
This was not meant to be a negative post but a cautionary one indeed I posted a link to a popular tech channel that was demonstrating the difficulties. If it's working great for you then that's hopeful news.
I heard the Google Hub is currently the "best" of the bunch. So you are using the Hue Hub? If so how is it working for non-Hue Matter devices? Are you using Matter devices or Matter to share devices between hubs? The latter is where I've heard of most of the issues.
I am not anti-Matter (bad pun).. just want to be able to leverage my existing Z-Wave/Zigbee devices without having to re-purchase everything. This should certainly be doable with a Matter capable hub. So far there are issues but as I mentioned - it's still early yet.
After my experience with the C7's 700 Z-Wave fisco ....
I prefer they wait it out and take their time on C8 if it going to be Matter supported. I will jump in early buy but I do hope they get it all sorted and tested hundred-fold before releasing next hub if it contains a new upgraded radio chipset.
Are you sure you're not thinking Thread? Some of the Z-Wave "issues" were related to the firmware of the SiLabs 700 Series chipset. Thread would likely be a dual Zigbee/Thread radio and you might expect some growing pains there.
Matter is more like a universal HubMesh. I don't think it requires any new hardware but I could be wrong. Maybe additional processing power/memory.
edit: what would be interesting is if they eventually deprecated HubMesh in favor of Matter.... 
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Hue hub does not support thread yet, and I am not aware of it being able to control other matter devices. I will have to try it out. I use matter to bridge the hue devices with HomeKit, so that HomeKit knows about all my hue lights and controls them.
What is cool, but I am not clear if this is part of the spec, is that with matter, I don’t get my hue groups (rooms and zones) only the devices (lights, dimmers, etv). In HomeKit if I create a device group, they all respond immediately and in sync, where with the original hue integration, the HomeKit would send the commands one at a time to each light, similar to what HE native hue app does.
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