Home security awaits tech-savvy Sauron, a San Francisco based tech startup, is ready to disrupt the premium home security market with its cutting edge technology. Founded in 2024, the company’s goal is to develop a military-grade security system blending cutting-edge technology with culturally relevant human insight. Sauron now has less than 40 employees. In 2026, they are counting on dramatically increasing their staff to bring onboard 10-12 more. The startup is looking to partner with early adopters this fall. As such, it’s beginning to prepare for its next Series A fundraising round, tentatively scheduled for mid-2026.
Maxime “Max” Bouvat-Merlin, Sauron’s newly appointed CEO, said something extremely provocative. He emphasized that the next round of fundraising is driven by a wish to grow faster rather than by any such necessity. He added that the money will be used to develop their first complete end-to-end product and increase customer adoption. Bouvat-Merlin most recently came to Sauron from nearly nine years at Sonos, where he was chief product officer. He is committed to keeping a leading-edge customer experience and producing sustainable growth.
Sauron raised $18 million from a wide array of angel investors. This very deep bench counts execs from Flock Safety and Palantir, as well as other defense tech unicorns 8VC and Atomic. Interest in the company’s idea has exploded, particularly in the Bay Area. In it, we explain how surging crime worries through and beyond the pandemic are powering its attraction.
While Bouvat-Merlin agrees that ensuring people have homes is crucial, he points out that deterring crime should be the goal, too. The sooner we are preemptive about deterrence, the more we can dissuade individuals that this is not the house to burglarize, that this is not the decision to undertake,” he asserted. He explained that millions of homeowners are dissatisfied with their existing smart home security deployments. Just like Congress, they’re increasingly on the lookout for better alternatives.
Sauron’s flagship product features pods with sophisticated cameras still loaded with a variety of other sensors. It has 40 cameras and advanced sensors such as LiDAR, radar and thermal imaging. The system integrates AI-driven intelligence and human monitoring by former military and law enforcement personnel, ensuring a comprehensive security solution.
“Our system connects to servers running machine learning software for computer vision,” Bouvat-Merlin described. This level of integration allows the team to understand possible threats like never before. He promised that the machine learning power of Sauron will be greatly boosted by the know how of these angry white dudes.
Despite the cutting-edge technology, Sauron would not comment on the record on the current state of their drone technology. However, Bouvat-Merlin expressed confidence in the company’s approach to home security through technology: “A lot of companies started as traditional security companies and are trying to add tech. We’re looking at it from the opposite angle — we’re a tech startup in San Francisco bringing technology to this market.”
Sauron’s strategy is to establish a trusted environment for customers. Bouvat-Merlin elaborated on this concept: “I granted you access to my house, so now you’re in the trusted group. When you come, I detect it’s you and you’re allowed in. Everyone else is an unknown person.” Through this bespoke experience, we want to improve security but build trust between the user and security measures.
