$500M/year Palantir for Dollar General
Jan-Erik Asplund
TL;DR: Flock Safety has expanded from $2,500/year license plate cameras into a bundled Safe City subscription combining cameras, gunshot detection, drones & command software, while building a $100M+ private security business. Sacra estimates Flock Safety hit $500M ARR in March 2026, up 65% YoY in 2025, valued at $8.4B for a 17x multiple. For more, check out our full report and dataset on Flock Safety.
We previously covered Flock Safety at $285M annual recurring revenue (ARR) at the end of 2024, as the company had just launched its FlockOS package of license plate reader, gunshot detection, and drones.
Key points via Sacra AI:
- Rather than buy license plate cameras from Motorola, gunshot detection from SoundThinking (fka ShotSpotter) & drones from Skydio and stitch them together, municipalities can now buy Flock’s Safe City subscription, bundling those tools with its FlockOS command software for roughly $20 per resident annually ($1M a year for a city around the size of Palm Springs), with 5–10-year contracts including hardware replacement and future products, expanding Flock Safety from selling $2,500/year cameras to selling a complete public safety system.
- With drones, live video, gunshot detection & investigative software now generating roughly 50% of forward revenue, Sacra estimates Flock Safety hit $500M ARR in March 2026, +65% YoY in 2025, valued at $8.4B as of April 2026 for a 17x multiple—compared to former investor & partner Axon (AXON) at $2.8B in 2025 revenue, +33% YoY, a $41.9B market cap and 15x multiple, which has entered license plate cameras and won Flock customers including Denver and Douglas County amid data-sharing concerns.
- Beyond the HOA & police departments, Flock has built a $100M+ ARR private security business as of March 2026, roughly 20% of total ARR, selling to retailers like Lowe’s, Home Depot & Dollar General alongside hospitals & logistics companies and expanding into automated security drones (September 2025) that respond to alarms at warehouses, hospital campuses & malls before a security guard goes out.
For more, check out this other research from our platform:
- Flock Safety (dataset)
- Anduril for your HOA
- 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