Arizona start-up One Raven has launched to rebuild the smart home around the premise that what happens inside the home should stay inside the home.

Backed by a $5m seed round led by Fifth Wall, One Raven is a privacy-focused smart home platform built from the hardware up with every component and line of code designed to keep the home’s intelligence inside the home.

At its centre is the One Raven Home Server, which allows every device to run locally and keeps homeowner data on the home network. Homeowners can securely access and manage the system remotely, with no subscriptions, no hidden fees and no behavioural data quietly monetised in the background.

The system pairs the Home Server with smart devices that work without sending the home’s data to the cloud. Homeowners can configure each home with the devices they want, including thermostats, locks, leak detection and security sensors. Every system arrives pre-paired and factory-configured.

Existing smart home systems can be a fragmented maze of apps, recurring subscriptions, cloud dependencies and privacy policies buried in legal language. Devices lose functionality when the internet goes down, when a company changes its pricing model or when a feature moves behind a higher subscription tier.

“We spent a decade building the smart home for the renters and commercial owners of multifamily portfolios,” said Lucas Haldeman, co-founder and CEO. “One Raven is for every homeowner who wants a modern living experience while maintaining their privacy.”

Haldeman’s co-founder is Sarah Roudybush, and together they were the team behind SmartRent’s rise to the largest smart apartment platform in real estate. With One Raven, they are bringing that experience to a new category: a smart home platform designed for people who live in the home, not the companies that collect data from it.

“The first generation of the smart home asked homeowners to send their data to the cloud and pay monthly fees for features they already owned,” said Roudybush. “We don’t think any of that is necessary. One Raven is built to prove there is a better model, one where the home is intelligent, simple, private and fully owned by the homeowner.”

Haldeman and Roudybush are building One Raven together as the next chapter of a partnership that helped define the first generation of the institutional smart home. They are now building the category for the people who live in the home, not the people who own the building.

Haldeman leads technology and sales. Roudybush is in charge of marketing and operations.

The $5m seed round was led by Los Angeles-based Fifth Wall, which previously backed Haldeman and Roudybush at SmartRent. Fifth Wall (fifthwall.com) founder Brendan Wallace has joined the board.

“Fifth Wall is backing Lucas and Sarah for a second time because we believe they are building the next generation of the smart home,” said Wallace. “The first generation was fragmented, cloud-dependent, and built around recurring fees. One Raven is building the opposite: a local-first, privacy-first platform designed for homeowners, builders, and a future where the home itself becomes intelligence infrastructure.”

The capital will support scaled production of the One Raven Home Server and initial device suite, expansion of the company’s local-intelligence software, and growth of the sales and partnership teams. One Raven (oneraven.com) is hiring across hardware engineering, software, field deployment and go-to-market roles in Phoenix. The company will announce its first homebuilder partnerships later in the third quarter.