Kevin Hartz’s security system failed to alert him when an intruder rang his doorbell and tried to enter his San Francisco home late one night. The serial entrepreneur decided existing solutions weren’t good enough.
His co-founder Jack Abraham had experienced similar frustrations at his Miami Beach residence.
In 2024, they launched Sauron, named after the sinister, all-seeing eye from “The Lord of the Rings,” to build what they envisioned as a military-grade home security system for tech elites.
The concept resonated in Bay Area circles, where crime had become a constant topic during and after the pandemic, despite San Francisco Police Department statistics showing property crime and homicide rates declining last year.
The startup raised $18 million from executives behind Flock Safety and Palantir, defence tech investors including 8VC, Abraham’s startup lab Atomic, and Hartz’s investment firm A*. It came out of stealth exactly a year ago, promising to launch in the first quarter of 2025 with a system combining AI-driven intelligence, advanced sensors like LiDAR and thermal imaging, and 24/7 human monitoring by former military and law enforcement personnel.
But a year later, Sauron is still very much in development mode, a reality that its new CEO, Maxime “Max” Bouvat-Merlin, acknowledged candidly in a recent interview.
After nearly nine years at Sonos, including a stint as chief product officer, Bouvat-Merlin took the helm of Sauron just last month. He’s spending his first days on the job finalising fundamental questions: which sensors to use, how exactly the deterrence system will work, and when the company can realistically get products into customers’ homes.
The answer to that last question? Later in 2026 at the earliest, a significant delay from the original timeline.
“We’re in the development phase,” Bouvat-Merlin said. “You’ll see a phased approach where we get our solution to market as a stepping stone. All the different components, our concierge service, our AI software running on servers, our smart cameras, are building blocks coming together in a plan we just put in place very recently.”
Bouvat-Merlin sees striking parallels between Sauron and Sonos, which both 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 topics he was thinking about when starting Sonos were exactly the same topics we’re discussing at Sauron.”
Both companies faced the same strategic questions: Start with super-premium customers or mass premium? Professional installation or DIY? Build everything in-house or partner with an ecosystem?
“We might make different decisions, but the questions are very similar,” he said.
Bouvat-Merlin says he was drawn to Sauron by both the mission and an opportunity to solve a real customer problem.
“Securing people’s homes is important, but I also like the deterrence aspect, changing people’s minds before they make a bad decision and get into trouble,” he said.
His research showed that market leaders in premium home security have small market shares and negative Net Promoter Scores.
“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 is a major concern,” people like Hartz. The plan is to start with this premium segment, establish a reputation for supporting demanding clients, then expand to what Bouvat-Merlin calls “mass premium.”
So what exactly is Sauron building? The answer is still evolving.
The offering starts with camera pods containing 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 linked to a 24/7 concierge service staffed by former military and law enforcement personnel.
“Those people understand patterns,” he said. “They’re good at helping us mature our machine learning solution and train our system to detect weird behaviours.”
The deterrence system remains somewhat vague. Options being considered include loudspeakers, flashing lights, and other methods. But Bouvat-Merlin emphasised that deterrence should begin before someone enters a property, detecting when homes are being surveilled, noticing cars circling neighbourhoods multiple times, and identifying threats at each stage.
“The more upfront we are with deterrence, the more we can convince people this is the wrong house to rob and the wrong decision to make,” he said.
As for the drones mentioned when Sauron first took the wraps off its plans last year, Bouvat-Merlin declined to say much.
“These are roadmap conversations. 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, bigger picture, the focus is on growing the ecosystem through partnerships rather than reinventing the wheel.
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 fundraise planned for mid-year.
“Raising a Series A is not about raising because we have to, it’s because we want to,” Bouvat-Merlin said. “I want to make sure we’re showing progress and explaining how we’ll use extra funds to accelerate growth, including to launch our first end-to-end product, drive customer adoption, and accelerate the roadmap.”
The company has already attracted a significant list of prospective clients, he said, thanks to work by Sauron’s three founders, which include roboticist and engineer Vasumathi Raman.
“We expect the strategy initially to be word of mouth, then grow differently over time.”
But Bouvat-Merlin is cautious about growth.
“I want to make sure we grow sustainably and keep the experience and service premium over time,” he said. “I want to manage growing pains as much as possible whilst driving profitability.”
Facial recognition and privacy concerns loom large for a surveillance-heavy product. Bouvat-Merlin outlined one approach: a trust-based system where homeowners grant access to specific people.
“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,” he said, painting a picture of a likely scenario.
Licence plate detection is also being considered for identifying cars circling neighbourhoods multiple times.
“How do we assess if that’s a threat? The ex-military and ex-law enforcement team will be really good at helping mature our machine learning solution,” he said.
Either way, Bouvat-Merlin is confident in the opportunity ahead because of Sauron’s approach.
“A lot of companies started as traditional security companies and are trying to add tech,” Bouvat-Merlin said. “We’re looking at it from the opposite angle, we’re a tech startup in San Francisco bringing technology to this market.”
Sauron is also appearing on the scene as concerns rise about crime amongst the most wealthy. Recent high-profile incidents include a November armed robbery 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 U.S. cities, sometimes at gunpoint. I don’t think the world is getting safer, there are probably more disparities between people at the top and bottom of the wealth spectrum. We see anxiety from prospective clients who are eager to get their homes secured.”
Still, much remains uncertain about Sauron’s path. The company must finalise everything from sensor configurations to manufacturing locations. Bouvat-Merlin mentioned potentially starting in the U.S. for proximity and control, then moving to more affordable locations as volume grows.
It must also determine how to serve customers in different settings, from estates with perimeters to dense urban residences, whilst maintaining premium service quality.
For now, Bouvat-Merlin says he’s focused on listening to his team, building credibility, and finalising the strategy he’s putting in place.
“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 later next year.
