Flock Safety

In 2017, Garrett Langley, Matt Feury, and Paige Todd founded Flock Safety in Atlanta. Langley recalled that his metro Atlanta neighborhood was hit by a rash of home and vehicle break-ins, and neighbors who reported them to police learned there were very limited avenues to investigate; he looked into installing license plate reading cameras, but the price of about $25,000 per camera was too high, so he drew on his electrical engineering background to build his own. Todd recalled that the team cold-called 20 neighborhoods, two of which bought on the spot, and that the earliest product was really just an Android phone in a waterproof box.⁠[1][2][2][3][3][3][3]

That same year, the company was accepted into Y Combinator’s Summer 2017 batch (S17). Langley said that during YC, Flock Safety devices helped police in Atlanta solve a crime for the first time.⁠[2][4][2]

In 2018, Flock closed its Series A at a valuation of about $60 million, about triple the valuation of a round just a few months earlier; Bedrock Capital founder Geoff Lewis flew to Atlanta at the time hoping to add a $10 million Series A-1 investment. The company says that in 2018 its system reached 1 million plates processed daily.⁠[4][4][4][1]

The company says that in 2020 it expanded with law enforcement partners and grew to 150 employees; in 2021 it launched gunshot detection, expanded into the private sector, grew to more than 300 employees, and reached a $1 billion valuation.⁠[1][1]

On February 15, 2022, Flock announced a $150 million Series E led by Tiger Global at a $3.5 billion valuation. The company says that in 2022 it grew to more than 600 employees and launched Flock OS, its integrated safety platform.⁠[2][2][1]

On March 1, 2022, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published a report by Jay Stanley arguing that Flock was building a form of mass surveillance unlike any seen before: it sells license plate recognition cameras to homeowner associations and other private parties as well as to police departments, its business model effectively enlists its customers into a giant centralized government surveillance network, and it planned to expand into video surveillance and AI machine vision.⁠[5][5][5][5][5]

The company says that in 2023 it was valued at $4.8 billion and launched new products such as video and a mobile app; in 2024 it grew to more than 1,100 employees.⁠[1][1][1]

In October 2024, Hampton Roads, Virginia, residents Lee Schmidt and Crystal Arrington, represented by the nonprofit law firm Institute for Justice, sued the City of Norfolk, arguing that the city’s use of Flock cameras amounted to warrantless searches violating their Fourth Amendment rights; the complaint said Schmidt’s car had been photographed 475 times in four and a half months.⁠[6][6][7][7][6]

On March 13, 2025, Flock announced a $275 million fundraise at a $7.5 billion valuation, led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Greenoaks, Bedrock, and others. The company says its annual recurring revenue surpassed $300 million over the past year, up 70% year over year, and its products reached more than 5,000 communities across the United States; following its acquisition of Aerodome, it planned to launch U.S.-manufactured drones in 2025, and its new 100,000-square-foot facility in Georgia would soon be operational.⁠[8][8][8][8][8][8]

In August 2025, Flock admitted to 9News in Denver that it had run a pilot program with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), although CEO Langley had previously denied the company had federal contracts. Langley then issued a statement acknowledging that the company had “communicated poorly,” that some public statements had inadvertently provided inaccurate information, and that it had not created distinct permissions in the system for federal users to ensure local compliance; the statement also acknowledged a pilot with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), announced a pause of all federal pilots, and said federal agencies would no longer have access to state or nationwide lookup networks.⁠[9][9][9][10][10][9][10][9]

The same month, Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias alleged that Flock broke the law by allowing CBP to access Illinois license plate data through a pilot and by having no safeguards to stop out-of-state police from violating the state’s 2023 law prohibiting the sharing of license plate data for immigration or abortion-related enforcement; the system had also allegedly been used earlier by out-of-state police to look for a woman who had recently had an abortion, which prompted the Secretary of State’s office to audit Flock. A Flock spokesperson said the company was unaware of any investigation and disagreed with the Secretary of State’s legal assertions. The law contains no specific penalties; the city of Evanston subsequently deactivated its Flock cameras and began canceling its contract.⁠[10][10][10][10][10][10][10]

In October 2025, Flock said it had introduced keyword filters to block searches for terms related to civil immigration enforcement or reproductive healthcare where state law forbids it, and it later required police to choose an “offense type” from a dropdown menu before searching. Audit logs showed some local police departments listing “ICE” or “immigration” as the reason for a search, appearing to search on behalf of federal agencies; Flock said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) does not have direct access to its platform.⁠[9][9][9][9][9]

The same month, the camera brand Ring and Flock announced plans to integrate Flock with Ring’s Community Requests feature, which lets Ring camera owners choose to share videos with local police. The town of Hillsborough, North Carolina, also announced in October that it had ended its relationship with Flock, citing concern that contract language could allow Flock to disclose data to any government entity or third party if it had a “good faith belief” of a need to do so.⁠[11][11][9][9]

On January 13, 2026, the Santa Cruz, California, city council voted to end its Flock contract after the city learned its local data had been shared with Flock’s national network without officials’ knowledge. As of mid-February 2026, at least 30 localities had deactivated Flock cameras or canceled contracts since the beginning of 2025, including Flagstaff, Arizona; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Eugene, Oregon. Flock said the number of new law enforcement agencies signing on far outpaced the number ending their agreements.⁠[9][9][9][9][9]

On January 27, 2026, federal judge Mark Davis ruled that Norfolk’s warrantless use of 176 Flock cameras was constitutional and dismissed the plaintiffs’ case. He found that the limited photographs available on a 21-day rolling basis from 75 camera clusters do not track the whole of a person’s movements, but cautioned that as the number and capabilities of the cameras expand, the constitutional balancing could tip the other way. The Institute for Justice, representing the plaintiffs, said it will appeal.⁠[7][6][7][6][7]

On February 12, 2026, Ring announced that it and Flock had jointly decided to cancel the planned integration because it would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated; Ring said the integration never launched and no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock.⁠[11][11][11][11]

As of late August 2026, the company, legally named Flock Group, had been sued 23 times in federal court, most of the cases filed in 2026; a consolidated litigation had been opened in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, originating in a putative class action alleging that Flock violates a California data sharing law on license plate readers. On August 25, 2026, Georgia resident Grace Schulte filed a federal class action against Flock Safety, alleging that its cameras are often used by police officers for stalking and other personal purposes and tend to provide inaccurate results, and seeking damages for invasion of privacy and punitive damages. The allegations in these lawsuits are the plaintiffs’ claims.⁠[12][12][12][12][13][13][13][13]

Beyond reading license plates, Flock’s AI-powered cameras record vehicle details such as make, model, and color, which police can use as search terms; the company operates a national data network that police can query to locate specific vehicles beyond their own jurisdictions. Each customer decides its own sharing settings, and the system records which agency initiated a search and for what stated purpose. As of February 2026, Flock had contracts with more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States.⁠[9][9][9][9][9]

In addition to license plate readers, Flock’s integrated platform includes gunshot detection, AI-powered video cameras, Drone as First Responder (DFR) technology, and other products, as well as software that helps investigators analyze data from multiple sources.⁠[8][8]

Flock Safety: Official website: https://www.flocksafety.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]

X: Public account: https://x.com/Flock_Safety (opens in a new window)⁠[14]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/flock-safety/ (opens in a new window)⁠[14]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/@FlockSafety (opens in a new window)⁠[14]