Atlanta Startup Bags Big Funding To Fight Crime

“Flock Safety has been a force multiplier for us to say the least,” – Jacob Johnston, Captain, Tulsa Police Dept.

Garrett Langley, once a victim of property crime in Atlanta, found himself disheartened when the police struggled to track the suspect due to a lack of evidence. During the investigation, he realized two key issues: capturing a criminal’s license plate number was a challenge, and that legacy license plate readers were expensive to roll out in the entire country. 

This sparked an opportunity for him that would lead to the creation of Flock Safety with the goal of not only eliminating crime but also to make the law enforcement cheaper and efficient.

He quickly pulled in his co-founder and CTO Matt Feury along with a few other early employees.

Holistic solution to crime

Flock Safety is essentially an all-in-one technology solution to eliminate crime and keep the community safe. Their platform is an all-intelligent based platform that combines the power of AI and communities at a magnificent scale to create safer communities for all by preventing and solving crime.

When the creators realised that one of the biggest obstacles in investigations is translating human observations to usable data, they built the FreeForm Search, a software that would help even the investigators to track down vehicles of interest using plain language descriptions.

Many of their features are completely AI-driven that would enhance how agencies investigate vehicular evidence.

Smarter tech, safer communities

Some of the prominent AI features that bring better precision on how Flock Safety works are Plate swapping insights, which is a system to  recognize if the same license plate has been seen on multiple vehicles within the last 30 days, whereas their Hotlist Hotspot Insights would optimizes patrol coverage and resource allocation by using data-driven insights to ensure officers are strategically positioned at the right time and location.

In addition to these features, law enforcement agencies can access core software APIs at no cost, as part of a commitment to drive positive community impact, along with several other security technologies such as mobile security trailers that offer enhanced protection for businesses and critical sites, including parking lots and construction zones. They provide after-hours monitoring and integrate with existing security cameras to share live footage with local law enforcement, ensuring faster response times and improved safety.

Even though Flock Safety started with a simple mission “to eliminate crime together,” over the years its vision and dedication has brought them immense recognition amongst the public and the law enforcement community.

CEO Garnett Langley said, “As we have expanded our product portfolio and reach to over 5,000 communities across the U.S., we’ve also expanded that vision — to provide the tools for cities, businesses, and individual communities to truly thrive”

Funding to fight crime

This was preceded by a successful round of funding where they raised a whopping $275 million, bringing their valuation to $7.5 billion. ​​The financing round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with additional participation from Greenoaks Capital, Bedrock Capital, Meritech Capital, Matrix Partners, Sands Capital, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins, Tiger Global, and Y Combinator.

In February 2022, Tiger Global led a $150 million Series E funding round for Flock Safety, raising the company’s valuation to $3.5 billion.

The company believes that this new funding would lead them to grow and accelerate  their commitment towards bigger and better technical innovations, which includes, enhancing their data intelligence platform, Nova, scaling U.S. made drone technology in 2025 that will support real-time crime response.

Flock Safety’s “technology crime-fighting company” faced competent competitors pre and post their arrival in the market, Motorola’s costly ALPRs were one of the few products available to most police departments. Rekor, another competitor, uses AI and machine learning to recognize license plates and search footage but it is different from Flock Safety as its a cloud only model and uses data from a third party hardware.

The founder and team believes that this new set of funding will work more in favour of public safety as the founder firmly hopes to secure federal investment and international customers.