Guard Owl, an Armenian-founded startup, has raised a $3 million Seed round to build AI agents for private security companies. The platform automates core operations that still run like it’s 2005, scheduling, dispatch, and reporting, while giving property managers real-time visibility, standardized documentation, and independent accountability. The goal is to turn private security from a black box into a measurable, verifiable service.
The company already works with major organizations including Greystar, JLL, and Cushman & Wakefield, along with more than 100 security companies.
A Security Industry That Has Been Left Behind
Private security protects people, property, and critical infrastructure, but much of the industry still operates on manual workflows and fragmented tools. Reports can be inconsistent, dispatch often stays reactive, schedules get built by hand, and clients rarely have a reliable source of truth. That lack of visibility is not a minor inconvenience, it’s a structural problem in a high-stakes field.
Guard Owl is positioning itself as the missing infrastructure layer: a shared system where security operators and property managers finally see the same reality.
What Guard Owl Is Building
Guard Owl’s mission is straightforward: AI agents that automate the backbone of security firms, including scheduling, dispatch, and reporting. But the platform is designed for both sides of the relationship. For property managers, it promises real-time transparency, standardized documentation, and independent accountability.
In practical terms, Guard Owl is trying to give the industry something it has never had at scale: one system where security companies and their clients share the same source of truth, turning security from a “trust me” service into a verifiable asset.
Three Founders, One Unfair Advantage
Guard Owl’s founding team brings a rare blend of backgrounds: generational private security experience, aerospace-grade reliability standards, and modern AI software execution.
Narek Kajikian: From SpaceX Rocket Engineer to Security Industry Builder
Narek Kajikian started in aerospace engineering before making his way into security. After university, he joined SpaceX, working as a rocket engineer on the Crew Dragon human space capsule and supporting missions that transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station. It was an environment where failure was not an option, and where first-principles thinking was the standard for solving problems that had never been solved before.
Security was never part of his plan, until he met Edrees and saw the physical security industry from the inside. What he found shocked him: an industry responsible for protecting people and property still operating on outdated systems, with enormous white space for modernization. For Narek, the parallel was immediate. If SpaceX could redefine aerospace, the same kind of engineering approach could redefine security.
“Security was never part of my original plan. That changed when I met Edrees,” Kajikian said. “I began drawing direct parallels between what SpaceX did to the aerospace industry and what could be done to security.”
Edrees Tabibzada: Generational Security, Built From the Ground Up
Edrees Tabibzada comes from what he describes as generational security. His father immigrated from Afghanistan and worked as a security officer for more than 30 years, and from a young age Edrees was already helping with scheduling, reports, and daily operations. Security was not a concept to him, it was life.
He later helped scale his brother’s security company from zero to hundreds of guards, managing over $80 million in annual payroll and thousands of active officers. Along the way, he worked every role in the business, from overnight guard and supervisor to operations manager, billing and payroll, sales manager, and eventually closing multi-million-dollar enterprise contracts.
At just over 18 years old, one week after his birthday, Edrees became the youngest PPO license holder in the state of California. He went on to found Aventus Private Security and later Regency Private Security, two highly successful security companies that each generate over $30 million in annual recurring revenue.
That range is rare. He understands private security from the guard level to the operator and enterprise level because he has lived every layer of it.
Sam Abelyan: The Engineer Building the Security Operating System
Sam Abelyan grew up around technology. His father is a senior software architect at NBC Universal, and his sister studied physics at UC Berkeley before leading product and data teams at Uber and Postman, so in his household, software was simply part of everyday life.
He studied Computer Science at UC Irvine, where he met Narek, and through that connection was introduced to Edrees and the vision behind Guard Owl. Before joining the company, Sam worked at Starship Technologies, an autonomous food delivery robotics company, where he was one of the youngest engineers on the team and was already spearheading AI and machine learning initiatives before consumer AI went mainstream.
For Sam, the mission is straightforward. Why should companies like Uber, built to move people from point A to point B, have better technology than the companies responsible for protecting people, families, and communities? At Guard Owl, he’s helping build what he describes as the security operating system of the world.
Why This Seed Round Matters
A $3 million Seed round gives Guard Owl the fuel to scale, but the bigger point is what it reflects: investors are betting that private security, a massive, high-stakes category, is still running on outdated infrastructure, and that the company that modernizes it can reshape the entire space.
Guard Owl is betting the next generation of security will not be built on clipboards, phone calls, and fragmented reporting. It will be built on automation, real-time visibility, standardized documentation, and accountability by default. With this Seed round, Guard Owl now has the runway to scale that vision.
The Bigger Picture: Armenian Founders in the Next Tech Wave
Guard Owl fits into a larger story Armenian communities have been watching closely. For years, Armenian tech success in the U.S. has been associated with a small handful of major names. Now a new wave is forming, founders building in AI, infrastructure, defense, fintech, education, and enterprise software.
Guard Owl belongs in that wave. Not because it’s Armenian-founded, but because it’s attacking a real industry problem with a serious team, real traction, and a platform that can scale. And that is how more Armenian names become part of the global tech conversation.
Because the future is not waiting, and neither are the builders.
