Verkada raises $200M in funding

SAN MATEO, Calif. — Verkada today announced a $200 million Series E funding round, led by General Catalyst, with significant investment from Eclipse and additional participation from new and existing investors.

Since its founding in 2016, Verkada has raised more than $700 million in funding, and the latest round values the company at $4.5 billion.

The company wrote that machine learning and applied computer vision have been core to Verkada's offering from the beginning, and that it recently expanded its AI-powered capabilities with natural language search and alerting features. Verkada said it plans to leverage this new capital to further infuse AI into its security and safety solutions, and more broadly enhance and expand its cloud-based physical security platform.

Verkada’s customer base has grown 111% since its last fundraise in September 2022. As a result, they said more than 91 companies in the Fortune 500 trust Verkada as their physical security layer, and more than 70% of Verkada's large customers leverage two or more of its products. That demand has driven Verkada's revenue up 95% in the same time period.

"Today, more than 1.5 million Verkada devices are online protecting people and places across the globe, and we have an incredible opportunity ahead as we continue to rapidly increase our market share and deliver category-defining solutions to our more than 30,000 customers," said Filip Kaliszan, co-founder and CEO of Verkada. "This latest commitment of capital reinforces the critical transformation that Verkada is driving in the market as applied AI fundamentally changes the ways that organizations keep people safe and drive business efficiency."

"Verkada's ability to integrate AI into real-world applications like video security, predictive maintenance, and environmental monitoring, has allowed their customers to interact with their security systems in intuitive, transformative ways," noted Deep Nishar, managing director, General Catalyst. "The business potential is enormous—whether it's protecting schools, hospitals, retailers, or manufacturing facilities, Verkada's combination of cloud-native software and integrated hardware we believe positions the company well to scale and reshape how we think about safety and security on a global scale."

Eclipse partner Aidan Madigan-Curtis, whose firm invests in cutting-edge technology to bridge digital and physical worlds, said aging security systems simply do not meet the needs of the modern world.

"Safety is increasingly on the minds of parents, audiences, consumers, and others in public and private arenas, but our infrastructure is severely lacking in secure, modern systems for threat detection, access control, and emergency alerting," said Madigan-Curtis. "This is a pivotal moment in time to combine the best in computer vision, advanced hardware, and AI to serve all citizens and their families. Eclipse is proud to partner with the Verkada team in order to continue to amplify the company's scale and global reach."