Athena Security lands $5.5M seed funding

June 13, 2019
Company's AI solution protects schools, mosques and Fortune 500 companies using current camera system without profiling

Austin, TX – June 13, 2019 – Athena Security, an A.I. security camera startup with 99% accuracy, today announces landing $5.5M in seed funding led by Pathfinder, the angel arm of Founders Fund, along with nearly 40 individual angel investors to speed mass adoption of the Company’s award winning security technology, named best threat and risk management systems at the 2019 Security Industry Awards. With successful gun detection system camera deployments at schools, businesses and places of worship, the world’s first truly accurate A.I. security camera instantly alerts law enforcement as soon as a gun or criminal act is detected.  Since launching last fall, Athena Security has grown to 24 employees helping keep clients like Archbishop Wood High School in Pennsylvania and Al-Noor Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand and other unnamed businesses more safe.

With an FBI-reported 1,247,321 violent crimes in the US in 2017, most of today’s security measures lack a preventative approach.  “Our goal is to save lives and speed help to the scene of the crime,” said Lisa Falzone, CEO and co-founder of Athena Security.  “As more and more school principals, business owners and religious leaders thank us for adding this extra layer of protection to keep the people they serve safe, it’s an overwhelming feeling that we’re making a difference.”

While Athena Security’s A.I. technology provides a never before ability to mitigate crimes with computer vision, also important is to be socially responsibility with such a new technology that could be linked to racial, ethnic and religious profiling.  Athena has proactively taken the necessary steps to eliminate profiling of any sort by masking and blurring out all subject faces in the system before artificial intelligence analyzes any and all video for potential threats. While this happens instantaneously, the end result is that no Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is tracked or distributed by Athena Security or its customers.

“Lisa Falzone and Chris Ciabarra have world-class business building pedigrees and their new software company, Athena Security, will not only safe lives and mitigate crime, but will do so in a socially responsible way that responds appropriately to today’s globally violent times.” said Adrian Fenty, General Partner at M Ventures and former Mayor of Washington, DC.

About Athena Security

Headquartered in Austin, TX and founded by former Revel Systems founders Lisa Falzone and Chris Ciabarra, Athena Security is a cutting edge A.I. security camera startup with 99% accuracy to help mitigate crimes and shootings for schools, corporations and places of worship.  The Athena Gun Detection Security system, which masks all Personally Identifiable Information (PII), can be stand alone or integrated with existing cameras.  For more information go to Athena Security’s website.