By Erica Thomas, managing editor
ATLANTA — Flock Safety announced a $150 million Series D fundraise. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, and existing investors Meritech, Bedrock, Matrix Partners, and Initialized also participated.
Garrett Langley, founder and CEO of Flock Safety, said this is the next step to the company going public. Langley, who started the company from his kitchen table, said he got the idea after his Atlanta-area neighborhood had issues with gang-related crime. He said he spoke to the police about the investigation. When he realized license plate numbers were needed to prosecute, he took matters into his own hands.
“My neighborhood got quoted just over a quarter of a million dollars to get license plate reader installed,” said Langley. “So, I said, ‘That’s crazy!’ I’m an electrical engineer from Georgia Tech and I have a buddy who was a computer science major. And I said, ‘let’s go build these things for my neighborhood.”
After realizing the readers were in high demand, Langley and his friend Matt Feury turned their idea into a business.
Since then, neighborhoods and law enforcement agencies, including the Trussville Police Department, have continued to add the cameras to protect their communities.
“The Trussville Police Department exemplifies innovation paired with good old-fashioned police work, said Langley. “Their passion and commitment to working with the community inspires me and with this recent fundraise, we can deepen our partnerships to reduce crime throughout greater Birmingham over the next three years.”
“Flock Safety provides incredibly powerful technology that helps my officers be much more effective,” said Trussville Police Chief Rush. “We’re looking forward to extending this partnership to solve more crime and keep our residents safe.”
Flock Safety builds devices that capture objective evidence and uses machine learning to create and deliver unbiased investigative leads to law enforcement. Flock’s proprietary devices and cloud-based software have been shown to reduce crime by +70% and help police solve more than 185 crimes every day, approaching 1% of all reported U.S. crime. That includes recovering hundreds of illegal weapons, stopping armed robberies, solving homicides, and rescuing kidnapping victims.
All Flock Safety products and services are built with privacy-first policies like automatically deleting footage every 30 days by default and never sharing or selling data to third parties. All footage is encrypted and securely stored in the cloud. The cameras are not used for traffic enforcement or immigration enforcement, and there is no facial recognition technology. Flock Safety technology adheres to state and local laws on data retention and user access.
Flock Safety technology already helps police drop crime rates and recover stolen property for neighborhoods, businesses, and police departments in more than 1,200 cities across the US, including Birmingham which has a team of Flock Safety employees local to the area.
“When we looked for something to stop crime in our neighborhood, there was nothing as effective as Flock Safety,” said Chapel Hills HOA President Morris Johnson. “The fact that we can capture the evidence our police need makes all the difference in the world.”
The funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, and David Ulevitch will join the board, alongside Alex Clayton of Meritech Capital and Ilya Sukhar of Matrix Partners.