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Outlet profile

Flock Safety

U.S. corporate / pro-law enforcement

Owned byFlock Group Inc., a privately held company co-founded by Garrett Langley, Matt Feury, and Paige Todd; major venture capital investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Greenoaks Capital, Bedrock Capital, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins, Matrix Partners, Tiger Global, Meritech Capital, and Y Combinator
FundingVenture capital; has raised approximately $658 million across eight rounds as of 2026; operating revenue comes from software-as-a-service subscriptions sold to law enforcement agencies, homeowners associations, and private property owners
On the administrationmixed

Background

Flock Safety was founded in Atlanta in 2017 by Garrett Langley, Matt Feury, and Paige Todd — all Georgia Tech alumni — after Langley was the victim of a property crime and found that police lacked the tools to identify suspects. The company launched through Y Combinator, introduced a solar-powered, cellular-connected ALPR camera on a subscription model priced far below legacy systems, and expanded rapidly. By 2025, Flock claimed operations in more than 5,000 communities across 49 states and more than 20 billion vehicle scans per month. The company blog has functioned throughout as a defensive PR platform rather than an editorial publication, responding to privacy and civil liberties critics with arguments that its cameras are not mass-surveillance tools and that data is owned by local government customers. Beginning in May 2025, investigative reports revealed that local police were querying Flock's database on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — giving federal immigration authorities indirect access to Flock's network without a direct federal contract. The company's initial blog response, titled 'Does Flock Share Data With ICE? No,' was criticized by the ACLU and others as misleading, since it denied direct access while knowing indirect access was occurring via local agencies. Flock subsequently acknowledged the issue, paused federal pilot programs (which had included partnerships with NCIS, HSI, and CBP), introduced keyword blocks for immigration-related searches, and in early 2026 added a toggle allowing local agencies to shut off all federal data-sharing. The controversy illustrates the blog's consistent pattern: publishing confident rebuttals to critics, then revising its position when the initial framing proves untenable. As of mid-2026 the company has reached an $8.4 billion valuation and $300+ million in annual recurring revenue.

Sources

  1. Flock Safety – Wikipedia
  2. Y Combinator's police surveillance darling Flock Safety raises $275M at $7.5B valuation – TechCrunch
  3. Flock Safety Credibility Lost as it Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police Departments, and Public – ACLU
  4. I'm Hearing About More Pushback Against Flock, Fueled by Concern Over Anti-Immigrant Uses – ACLU
  5. Does Flock Share Data With ICE? – Flock Safety blog
  6. Setting the Record Straight: Statement on Flock Network Sharing, Use Cases, and Federal Cooperation – Flock Safety blog
  7. Reported: ICE using automated license-plate-reader cameras for immigration enforcement via state/local police – Immigration Policy Tracking Project
  8. Leaving the Door Wide Open: Flock Surveillance Systems Expose Washington Data to Immigration Enforcement – UW Center for Human Rights
  9. Who Owns Flock Safety? Founders, Investors & $8.4B Valuation
  10. Why Flock Safety Finds Itself in a Surveillance Backlash – Government Technology

Profile compiled 2026-07-21; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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