The AI-powered physical security platform protecting 30,000+ organizations
HQ: San Mateo, CA, United States | Founded: 2016 | Employees: ~2,500 (2026, est.) | Stage: Late Stage VC ($5.8B valuation) | Website: https://www.verkada.com
Verkada was founded in 2016 in San Mateo, California, by Filip Kaliszan (CEO, previously co-founder of social analytics startup Addepar-scale ventures and an early engineer), James Ren, and Benjamin Bercovitz. The founding insight: physical security infrastructure — cameras, access control, alarms — was stuck in the 1990s, with fragmented hardware, local-only storage, and clunky software. Verkada's answer was a unified, cloud-native platform: every camera and sensor is a networked device streaming to the cloud, managed from a single web dashboard, with AI built in from day one.\n\nThe company scaled with remarkable velocity, crossing $1 billion in annualized bookings and 30,000+ customers across 100+ countries — from schools and retailers to Fortune 500 enterprises and major public institutions. Verkada's product surface expanded from video security to access control, environmental sensors (temperature, humidity, air quality), alarms, and AI analytics (person/vehicle search, anomaly detection), making it a full physical-security operating system rather than a camera vendor.\n\nFinancially, Verkada raised more than $757M across 12 rounds: a $100M Series D (October 2023), a $200M Series E at $4.5B led by General Catalyst (February 2025), and a $100M round at $5.8B led by CapitalG (December 2025). The company is frequently cited as an IPO candidate, and its growth — roughly tripling valuation in two years while maintaining private-market discipline — makes it one of the most important independent companies in the physical-security and AI-hardware category.
Verkada did for physical security what the cloud did for software: replace fragmented, on-premise camera systems with a unified cloud platform where cameras, access control, sensors, and alarms live on one interface — then layer AI on top (search, alerts, analytics). The model produced exceptional growth: $1B+ annualized bookings, 30,000+ customers, and a valuation path from $4.5B (Feb 2025) to $5.8B (Dec 2025) with General Catalyst and CapitalG leading. The bull case is platform consolidation of a massive, antiquated industry plus AI features that keep expanding; the bear case is intense competition (Motorola, Avigilon, cloud rivals), enterprise security/trust scrutiny (Verkada has had notable security incidents), and the hardware-software complexity of scaling globally.
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