Anduril for your HOA
Jan-Erik Asplund
TL;DR: With the launch of Raven (gunshot detection), Aerodrome (drone surveillance), and Flock911 (dispatch integration), Flock Safety is evolving from a license plate camera company into a comprehensive public safety platform competing with entrenched incumbents like Axon (NASDAQ: AXON). Sacra estimates that Flock Safety grew to $285M ARR at the end of 2024, up 70% YoY, amid continuing police staffing shortages post-COVID. For more, check out our full report and dataset on Flock Safety.
Key points via Sacra AI:
- Circa 2017, license plate recognition cameras from companies like Motorola (NYSE: MSI) cost $20-50K per unit, limiting their adoption to police departments and government agencies—creating the opportunity for Flock Safety (2017) to launch as a $2,500/year alternative for neighborhood homeowners’ associations (HOAs) struggling with 10% property crime clearance rates. Flock's subscription model ($2,500 per camera annually including hardware, maintenance and updates) democratized access to license plate recognition technology, allowing them to sell into 1) budget-constrained HOAs, and then 2) police departments and government agencies looking to blanket their communities in more and more cameras.
- Riding the severe post-COVID staffing shortages affecting ~80% of police departments nationwide, Sacra estimates that Flock Safety grew to $285M in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in 2024, up 70% year-over-year, raising $275M at a $7.5B valuation (Bedrock Capital) in March 2025 for a 25x forward multiple on currently ~$300M ARR. Compare to bodycam and public safety giant Axon (NASDAQ: AXON) at $2.1B in revenue in 2024 (up 33% YoY), valued at $50B for a 24x multiple, and Motorola Solutions (NYSE: MSI) at $10.8B in revenue (up 8% YoY), valued at $71B for a 6.6x multiple.
- Going on the offensive, Flock has launched Raven (2023) for gunshot detection, Aerodrome (2024) for drone surveillance, and Flock911 (2024) for dispatch integration, bringing all that data together in FlockOS’s (2023) real-time crime center—positioning it to compete with entrenched incumbents like Axon. An emerging wave of public safety startups is bringing the Anduril/Palantir approach of unified hardware and software to police departments, HOAs, and first responders, from Peregrine ($30M ARR, Sequoia) for unified analytics to Mark43 ($257M raised, General Catalyst) for cloud-native records management to RapidSOS ($355M raised, Founders Fund) for emergency data via wearables.
For more, check out this other research from our platform:
- Flock Safety (dataset)
- Anduril (dataset)
- SpaceX (dataset)
- Anduril, SpaceX, and the American dynamism GTM playbook
- The biggest mistake defense startups make
- Ross Fubini, Managing Partner at XYZ Capital, on the defense tech opportunity
- Shield AI (dataset)
- Scott Sanders, chief growth officer at RRAI, on the defense tech startup playbook