About Watchful
The end-to-end agentic security platform.
Watchful replaces the complexity of traditional monitoring with a fully agentic, end-to-end solution — from camera to response. We process over 32 million images every week across sovereign Agentic SOCs in the US and New Zealand, stopping threats before they become incidents.
2022
Founded
30+
Team members
4+
Countries served
32M+
Images processed weekly
Global infrastructure
Sovereign Agentic SOCs
Our AI agents run inside purpose-built, sovereign Security Operations Centers — keeping data local and response times fast.
United States
Austin, Texas
1 Agentic SOC
New Zealand
Auckland & Wellington
2 Agentic SOCs
Unlike bolt-on analytics tools, Watchful is a fully agentic platform that handles the entire chain — ingesting camera feeds, detecting threats with AI, triaging alerts, and coordinating response — all without human bottlenecks. For security teams overwhelmed by false alarms, staffing shortages, and fragmented tools, Watchful replaces the pain with a single, intelligent system that works around the clock.
Joshua Parsons
Founder & CEO
Obsessed with stopping bad guys since age 17
"I've spent my entire career in security and policing. The mission has never changed — stop crime before it happens, and do it better, faster, and cheaper than anyone thought possible."
I've been in the world of security and policing since I was 17. After five years serving in the New Zealand Police, I founded a security integration company that grew to become one of the largest solar trailer businesses in New Zealand before I sold it in 2025. Along the way I became hyper-fixated on one question: why is security technology so far behind when the stakes are so high?
That question led me to start Watchful in 2022. I wanted to build something that didn't just alert — it acted. A fully agentic platform that could see a threat, understand it, and coordinate a response without waiting for a human to notice a blinking screen. I'm obsessed with exceptional product experience and believe security teams deserve tools that genuinely make their lives easier, not harder.
Today, Watchful processes over 32 million images a week and operates across three sovereign Agentic SOCs. We're just getting started.
Trusted by security teams worldwide
Our investors
Backed by world-class partners
Our journey
Company timeline
Watchful founded
Joshua Parsons founds Watchful in Auckland, New Zealand.
V1 Platform in production
The first version of Watchful launches in New Zealand, delivering real-time threat detection to early customers.
Callaghan Innovation R&D grant
New Zealand's government innovation vehicle awards Watchful a $400k grant to accelerate automation and AI projects.
$4.65m NZD Seed Round
Blackbird Ventures leads a $4.65m NZD seed round to fuel Watchful's expansion into the US market.