This company was born out of necessity – a personal mission that started after a senseless mass shooting at my high school, and sharpened after witnessing the Boston Marathon tragedy during my years at MIT. Weapons violence is on the rise, and the world’s so-called “best” security solutions are stuck in the past: slow, invasive, and blind to modern threats. Most “AI for security camera” companies only react after a weapon is brandished – too late to save lives.

 

Society deserves proactive, non-disruptive, and privacy-preserving security. A future where physical security blends into the background and everyone is safer.

 

A future that only now is within reach.

 

The Technology Breakthrough
 

The gold standard for concealed weapons detection has long been millimeter-wave scanners at airports. But these are costly, inconvenient, and impractical for everyday spaces like schools, transit, or coffee shops. Most places simply go unprotected, and the tragedies can (and do) happen. We set out to change that.

 

I used to think this problem was technically unsolvable, until I found myself at MIT, surrounded by a handful of Terahertz pioneers. Much like the early days of computing, THz was the wild west: a few labs with room-sized setups, no path to scale, and zero commercial activity.

 

But the writing was on the wall: Moore’s Law was about to collide with Terahertz, providing a path to bring this technology out of the lab and to the people who need it the most. During my PhD, we demonstrated one of the first solid-state Terahertz imaging radars – featured early on in TechCrunch and MIT News - using silicon CMOS foundry technology, the same extensible and cost-effective technology used for cutting-edge AI chips. This imaging radar technology combines the 3D imaging capabilities of lidar with the see-through power of X-ray, but with human-safe radio waves at a thousandth the power of your cell phone.

 

Today, Cambridge Terahertz is one of the only companies globally with an FCC license to operate at Terahertz frequencies, including a rigorous human safety analysis. Our technology shrinks airport-scale scanners into a device the size of a security camera – real-time, unobtrusive, and ready for the real world.

 

From an MIT Garage to Real-World Impact

 

Cambridge Terahertz was founded out of a literal garage near MIT (affectionately termed “Garage Mahal”). In the 2.5 years since, we’ve built a world-class team of ten in Sunnyvale, CA, established a state-of-the-art THz test lab, and completed three generations of our custom silicon imaging prototypes. A classic dual-use technology, we’ve secured four active government contracts, including support from the DoD and NSF. This spring, we conducted our first public demos at ISC West, proving this is more than science fiction. With a dozen-plus LOIs from leading customers, our first trials are coming later this year.

 

For a long time, we thought detecting weapons and saving lives was the end of the story. However, we’ve begun to realize that Terahertz's platform potential is massive. From nearly day one, customers have approached us for applications in supply chain visibility, loss prevention, non-destructive testing and beyond. Our technology’s ability to see through materials safely and affordably opens doors across manufacturing, aerospace, medical, and more. With so many potential applications, the sky is truly the limit for Terahertz imaging.
 

What’s Next

 

Today, I’m beyond excited to announce our $12M seed round, led by Felicis with participation from Amazon, Tishman Speyer, Plug and Play, Good Growth Capital, Stata Capital, and more. This is a dream team of investors who share our vision and appetite for impact.

 

This funding is fuel – not the finish line. We’re scaling our team, accelerating product development, and gearing up for early deployments. The metric that matters isn’t dollars raised, but lives saved and value created. As a mentor once told me, “Technology is one of the few ways to add to our own lives without taking away from others.” That’s the ethos driving us every day.

 

Bringing full-custom silicon and bleeding-edge technology to scale is a difficult and thrilling journey full of unique challenges. Still, we are closer than ever to making this vision a reality as we innovate from transistors all the way up to algorithms. I’m humbled to be surrounded by some of the only people in the world capable of doing this - we value execution, urgency, and celebrate tackling the impossible, all at breakneck speed.  If you’re excited by our vision and are willing to move fast and learn quickly, we’re hiring engineers and researchers to join our team in Sunnyvale – please apply!

 

To our investors, advisors, and partners: thank you for believing in our mission. To the team on the ground, thank you for your tireless work in making the impossible happen.

 

Stay tuned – we’re just getting started.

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Nathan M Monroe, PhD

Founder & CEO