Published · 10h agoLeadership2 min read
An 11% step-up prices Flock at about 17 times recurring revenue, down from 25 at the previous round. Councils are striking the machine-learning clause out of their contracts one vote at a time.
Context for builders, not their beat.
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Price the two rounds against revenue and the step-up reads differently. The earlier mark was about 25 times annual recurring revenue; the new one is about 17 [7][8]. Roughly a third has come off what a buyer pays for a dollar of Flock's recurring revenue, because the valuation moved 11 percent while the revenue under it grew about two thirds [6][9][10]. The step before this one, up from the $3.5 billion Tiger Global led at in February 2022, was 114 percent [24][25].
What got cheaper is the part of Flock that is not cameras. Flock's position, given to Fortune, is that the data belongs to its customers, who hold it for as long as they choose [14]. Two privacy attorneys who had reviewed Flock contracts in other jurisdictions told Fortune they each found the same retention pattern the Los Angeles audit quoted [13]. Both readings sit in one document: the department owns the record, and the training right lives in a paragraph the department signed and can ask to have struck.
Idaho Falls shows what striking it costs. The police chief saw residents discussing the contract online, and the city called its attorney [29]. City attorney Zachary Jones told the council the existing terms let Flock use customer data to improve its own services and products [17]. The amendment leaves Flock the non-footage data, which Jones said covers hardware diagnostics such as working out why a camera broke [18], and narrows the contract's Permitted Purpose to the law enforcement uses authorized by Idaho Code 49-1432 [19]. Chief Bryce Johnson put the rest plainly: "Idaho Falls is a very small player in this big country, and they don't need our data" [20].
One city among more than 5,000 communities is nothing against the corpus [22]. A one-page amendment that keeps the hardware telemetry and deletes the training clause, at no cost to the council, is a different matter, and the material here offers no count of how many contracts still carry the original language.
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
In March 2025 Flock Safety raised $275 million at a $7.5 billion valuation, in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz with Greenoaks, Bedrock, Meritech, Matrix, Sands Capital, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins, Tiger Global and Y Combinator participating.
Flock told Fortune it has since raised $500 million at an $8.3 billion valuation.
At the March 2025 round Flock said it had surpassed $300 million in annual recurring revenue, a 70% year-over-year increase.
Flock told Fortune it crossed $500 million in annual recurring revenue in the first half of this year.
Tiger Global led a $150 million Series E in February 2022 at a $3.5 billion valuation, joined by 776, Spark Capital, a16z, Bedrock, Matrix, Meritech and Initialized.
The Los Angeles Inspector General audited LAPD's Flock contracts this summer and quoted the signed language: one agreement lets Flock "retain the right to use the foregoing for any purpose in Flock's sole discretion," while a separate agreement grants the company rights to use anonymized footage for "training of machine learning algorithms."
The reporting this story was synthesized from, earliest first. Every link goes to the original.
Cited in this coverage: Chief Bryce Johnson to EastIdahoNews.com