Philip Calisan, CEO of Verkada.
Provided by: Verkada
Security technology startup Verkada has reached a valuation of $5.8 billion after a new funding round led by CapitalG. of the alphabet The venture capital arm made the announcement on Wednesday.
“I think Google sees an opportunity for us in the application of AI and everything we’re doing to apply AI to the physical security industry,” CEO Philippe Callizan told CNBC’s Deirdre Botha.
The company said in a release that the investment will be used to enhance its artificial intelligence capabilities and provide liquidity.
A person familiar with the terms of the round told CNBC that the total amount raised was $100 million, and the company’s valuation was up $1.3 billion from February’s Series E funding. The person requested anonymity to discuss funding details.
CapitalG also recently helped raise $435 million for cybersecurity startup Armis in November.
This new funding comes as Verkada exceeds $1 billion in annual bookings through 30,000 customers worldwide.
The company develops physical security products such as cameras, alarms, and sensors that are connected through a single cloud-based software platform.
Kalizan said his company serves a wide range of businesses, including retailers, government facilities, schools and transportation agencies.
For example, TeraWatt Infrastructure, which provides charging sites for electric vehicles such as Google’s Waymo, uses Verkada technology to protect its EV facilities.
In September, the company rolled out more than 60 new AI features and platform updates, including tools like “AI-powered unified timelines.”
This tool allows security teams to automatically composite video and images from multiple cameras into a single visual timeline, without having to examine multiple videos during an investigation.
“The genius of Philippe and the team at Verkada is that they are leveraging AI as a Rosetta Stone to extract insights from cameras to make businesses safer and more efficient,” CapitalG general partner Derek Zanutto told Botha.
By capturing more than 20 million images per hour, Verkada can provide notable data such as pedestrian counts, occupancy, security violations, and other trends, Zanutto said.
He added that physical security is a $60 billion dormant market, driven by legacy hardware like “cameras that just record, not cameras that think,” and that Verkada hopes to fill this gap.
However, AI-powered technology won’t immediately replace human security guards.
“As far as I’m concerned, I think humans will continue to provide security to other humans,” Kalizan said. “But AI can help these first responders become more aware, understand the situation, know what to do, and in some cases, actually prevent problems from occurring.”
He pointed to October’s Louvre robbery, in which multiple treasures were stolen from the museum, as an opportunity for AI-assisted devices that can actively monitor and immediately alert security forces to be more effective than physical personnel alone.
“If you can intervene on the spot, if you know in real time that it’s happening, the potential to save money and prevent damage is enormous,” he says.
