Published · 10h agoInvest2 min read
The valuation Flock reported in April prices $500 million of public-agency subscriptions at 16.6x. What those subscriptions let the company do with the data is being rewritten in Los Angeles.
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Take the price at face value and the interesting half is the denominator. This is subscription revenue from roughly 5,000 law enforcement agencies, per Flock's own count to the Los Angeles Times [7], and what those subscriptions permit is being rewritten one city at a time. The LAPD's proposed replacement contract would give the department ownership of "every image, every record, all metadata," bar Flock from selling, publishing, disclosing or sharing the data or using it to train artificial intelligence or for other commercial uses, and require written notice of a breach within 24 hours [11]. Flock has already sent the department suggested changes to that draft, according to LAPD chief information officer Dean Gialamas [19], so the template is not settled.
Cancellations are not the pressure point. Fortune's count of 82 terminations since 2021 [6] works out to about 1.6 percent of that agency base [8]. The repricing happens on renewal, and it has happened once already at the fund level: Bedrock and Flock reported $275 million at a $7.5 billion valuation in March 2025 against more than $300 million of ARR crossed the year before [3], which is 25 times [4]. Today's figure sits about a third lower [5], while ARR moved from $300 million to $500 million over roughly 18 months, near 67 percent cumulative [18] against the 70 percent single-year rate Flock's spokesperson cited earlier [3].
More than half of new revenue is now non-plate-reader, the company confirmed to Fortune [12], and it is sold through the same municipal vehicle being argued over. Langley's position is that communities set their own sharing rules, offense filters and retention windows [15]. For a buyer at 16.6x, that is the vendor saying the terms of the revenue are not his to fix.
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Flock told Fortune in April that it had raised $500 million at an $8.3 billion valuation, had taken in $1.2 billion in total funding, and crossed $500 million in annual recurring revenue in the first half of 2026.
Flock and Bedrock Capital announced in March 2025 that the company had raised $275 million at a $7.5 billion valuation; spokesperson Holly Beilin said Flock crossed over $300 million in ARR the previous year, 70% year-over-year growth, and its valuation a year earlier had been $4.8 billion.
Fortune reported that 82 Flock contracts have been terminated since 2021 and that residents in 36 states have vandalized or destroyed automated license plate recognition cameras.
Flock has said it contracts with roughly 5,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide.
Fortune reported that the LAPD's inspector general found at least one Flock contract lets the company retain data for five years and use it for any purpose in Flock's sole discretion.
The LAPD let its previous operating agreement with Flock lapse over lingering questions about who owns and can access the plate reader data; 138 pole-mounted Flock cameras are still operating in the city, but the department no longer has regular access to the data being gathered.
The reporting this story was synthesized from, earliest first. Every link goes to the original.