When Kevin Hartz’s security system failed to alert him when an intruder rang his doorbell and tried to break into his San Francisco home late one night, the serial entrepreneur decided existing solutions weren’t good enough. Co-founder Jack Abraham had experienced similar frustrations at his Miami Beach residence.
In 2024 they started Sauron — named after the sinister, all-seeing eye from “Lord of the Rings” — to create what they envisioned as a military-grade home security system for the tech elite. The idea resonated in Bay Area circles, where crime has become a constant issue during and after the pandemic, despite statistics from the San Francisco Police Department showing property crime and homicide rates were down last year.
The startup has raised $18 million from executives behind Flock Safety and Palantir, defense tech investors like 8VC, Abraham Atomic’s startup lab, and Hartz’s A* investment firm. It came out of stealth exactly a year ago, promising to launch in the first quarter of 2025 with a system that combines artificial intelligence, advanced sensors like LiDAR and thermal imaging, and 24/7 human monitoring by ex-military and law enforcement personnel.
But a year later, Sauron is still very much in growth mode – a reality that its new CEO, Maxime “Max” Bouvat-Merlin, candidly acknowledged in a recent interview with TechCrunch.
After nearly nine years at Sonos, including a stint as Chief Product Officer, Bouvat-Merlin took the helm of Sauron just last month. He spends his first days on the job finalizing fundamental questions: what sensors to use, how exactly the deterrence system will work and when the company can realistically deliver products to customers’ homes.
The answer to that last question? Later in 2026 at the earliest — a significant delay from the original schedule.
“We are in the development phase,” Bouvat-Merlin said. “You’re going to see an incremental approach where we bring our solution to market as a stepping stone. All the different elements—our concierge service, our AI software running on servers, our smart cameras—are building blocks that come together in a design that we’ve only recently implemented.”
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But Bouvat-Merlin sees striking parallels between Sauron and Sonos, which target wealthy customers first, rely on word-of-mouth growth and combine complex hardware with sophisticated software. “I had lunch with John MacFarlane, the founder of Sonos, a few weeks ago,” Bouvat-Merlin said. “All the issues he was thinking about when he started Sonos were exactly the same issues we’re discussing at Sauron.”
Both companies faced the same strategic questions: Start with super-premium or mass-premium customers? Professional installation or DIY? Create everything in-house or work with an ecosystem? “We may make different decisions, but the questions are very similar,” he said.
The security problem
Bouvat-Merlin says he was drawn to Sauron both by the mission and the opportunity to solve a real customer problem. “Safeguarding people’s homes is important, but I also like the prevention aspect — changing people’s minds before they make a bad decision and get into trouble,” he said.
His research showed that the market leaders in premium home insurance have small market shares and negative net promotion results. “People are not happy with their solutions today,” he said. “There are so many false positives that when law enforcement is called, they don’t respond because they assume it’s a false alarm.”
The company is targeting customers “where safety and security are a major concern” — people like Hartz. The plan is to start with this premium segment, build a reputation for supporting discerning customers, and then expand into what Bouvat-Merlin calls “mass premium.”
The problem (still forming)
So what exactly is Sauron’s building? The answer is still evolving. The offering starts with cameras that contain multiple sensors — “40 cameras and different types of sensors, potentially LiDAR and radar, potentially thermal,” Bouvat-Merlin said. These pods connect to servers running machine learning software for computer vision, all connected to a 24/7 concierge service staffed by ex-military and law enforcement personnel.
“These people understand standards,” he said. “They are good at helping us mature our machine learning solution and train our system to detect strange behavior.”
The deterrent system remains somewhat unclear. Options being considered include loudspeakers, flashing lights and other methods. But Bouvat-Merlin stressed that deterrence must begin before someone enters a property, identifying when homes are being watched, observing cars that circle neighborhoods multiple times and detecting threats at every stage.
“The more upfront we are with deterrence, the more we can convince people that this is the wrong house to rob and the wrong decision to make,” he said.
As for the drones mentioned when Sauron first finalized its plans last year, Bouvat-Merlin declined to say much. “These are road map discussions. I don’t want to go too deep at this point because there are so many things we could do, but we’re such a small company,” he said. He added that, in the bigger picture, the focus is on growing the ecosystem through partnerships rather than reinventing the wheel.
Timeline and business model
With fewer than 40 employees, Sauron plans to hire just 10 to 12 more in 2026. The company will also begin working with early adopters later in 2026, with a Series A fundraising planned for the middle of the year.
“Raising a Series A isn’t about raising because we have to — it’s because we want to,” Bouvat-Merlin said. “I want to make sure we show progress and explain how we’re going to use additional capital to accelerate growth, [including to] we’re launching our first end-to-end product, driving customer adoption and accelerating the roadmap.”
The company has already attracted a significant list of prospective customers, he said, thanks to the work of Sauron’s three founders, which includes robotics and engineering Vasumathi Raman. “We expect the strategy will initially be word of mouth and then develop differently over time.”
But Bouvat-Merlin is cautious about growth. “I want to make sure we grow sustainably and maintain the high-quality experience and service over time,” he said. “I want to manage growing pains as much as possible while increasing profitability.”
The question of the surveillance state
Facial recognition and privacy concerns loom large for a tracking-heavy product. Bouvat-Merlin described one approach: a trust-based system where homeowners grant access to specific people. “I granted you access to my home, so now you are in the trust group. When you come, I detect that it is you and you are allowed in. Everyone else is an unknown person,” he said, painting a picture of a possible scenario.
License plate detection is also being considered to identify cars that circle neighborhoods multiple times. “How do we assess whether it’s a threat? The ex-military team and the ex-law enforcement team will be very good at helping mature the machine learning solution,” he said.
Either way, Bouvat-Merlin is confident of the opportunity ahead of him. The home security market is fragmented. ADT leads with about 18% market share, with competitors holding small pieces. “A lot of companies started out as traditional security companies and are trying to add technology,” Bouvat-Merlin said. “We’re looking at it from the opposite angle — we’re a tech startup in San Francisco that’s bringing technology to this market.”
Sauron also comes to the fore as concerns about crime among the wealthy increase. Recent high-profile incidents include an armed robbery in November at the home of tech investors Lachy Groom and Joshua Buckley in San Francisco’s Mission District, where $11 million in cryptocurrency was stolen during a 90-minute ordeal involving torture and threats.
“We see people who are wealthy attracting criminals,” Bouvat-Merlin said. “We’ve seen a lot of robberies in San Francisco and other major US cities, sometimes at gunpoint. I don’t think the world is getting any safer – there’s probably more disparity between people at the top and bottom of the wealth spectrum. We’re seeing stress from prospective customers who want to secure their homes.”
However, much remains uncertain about Sauron’s path forward. The company needs to finalize everything from sensor configurations to manufacturing locations. (Bouvat-Merlin said it may start in the U.S. for proximity and control, then move to more accessible locations as volume grows.)
It must also define how to serve customers in different environments, from perimeter estates to dense urban housing, while maintaining the highest quality of service.
For now, Bouvat-Merlin says he is focused on listening to his team, building credibility and completing the strategy he is implementing. “I don’t demand that people trust me – I want to show them why they should.”
The company expects to share more details about its products within the next year.
