Flock Safety and certainly one of its long-time VCs, Bedrock Capital, announced Thursday that the startup raised a recent $275 million at a $7.5 billion valuation.
Flock makes pc vision-enabled video surveillance expertise utilized by regulation enforcement in addition to companies, property administration corporations, and so forth. It’s finest identified for its automatic license plate recognition tech, however Flock additionally makes gunshot detection tech marketed to varsities, and not too long ago acquired public safety drone company Aerodome.
Flock was based in 2017 and went by way of Y Combinator that very same yr. Development exploded within the subsequent years. Flock crossed over $300 million in annual recurring income final yr, which is 70% year-over-year development, Flock spokesperson Holly Beilin instructed TechCrunch.
The Atlanta-based startup has now raised over $950 million in whole funding, according to PitchBook data, and its final valuation a yr in the past was $4.8 billion. Return buyers Andreessen Horowitz, GreenOaks, Meritech Capital, Matrix Companions, and YC participated on this spherical.
On condition that it makes surveillance tech, Flock has unsurprisingly had its share of controversies. As an example, the ACLU cited concerns with Flock over the sort of mass surveillance it permits and, a yr in the past, urged the corporate to permit impartial assessment of its merchandise. Privateness advocates in Norfolk, Virginia are currently suing to cease Flock from being deployed there.
Flock can also be going through a wrongful termination lawsuit from a sitting mayor of a small California city, as TechCrunch recently reported.
That stated, Flock has been a VC darling for years.
As an example, Bedrock’s founder, Geoff Lewis, recounted how he flew to Atlanta in 2018 to beg Flock co-founder Garrett Langley to take a $10 million Collection A-1, one of many first checks from Lewis’ new agency. However Langley had simply closed Flock’s Collection A.
That deal was a “completely insane” $60 million valuation, as Bedrock described it — about triple the valuation of the A spherical just some months earlier. Langley took the cash — and has gone on take over $164 million in investments from Bedrock since.
By the way in which, Lewis, who hailed from Founders Fund, now has different large names in Bedrock’s portfolio, like OpenAI, Rippling, and Mach Industries.
In the meantime, a16z’s American Dynamism fund lead, David Ulevitch, led different rounds for Flock. “Past defending property, Flock Security is actually serving to to avoid wasting lives,” Ulevitch and a16z development VC David George opined in 2021.
YC’s Garry Tan took to LinkedIn simply a few months ago to applaud the success charge Flock claims it has achieved in preventing crime.
But it surely’s Flock’s income development, along with its public security merchandise, that’s brought about buyers to “proceed to double and triple down on Flock,” Beilin stated.
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