7. Flock Safety
Founders: Garrett Langley (CEO), Paige Todd, Matt Feury, Bailey QuintrellLaunched: 2017Headquarters: Atlanta, GeorgiaFunding: $957.5 million (PitchBook)Valuation: $7.5 billion (PitchBook)Key Technologies: Artificial intelligence, cloud computing, edge computing, machine learning, Internet of ThingsIndustry: Public safety, defensePrevious appearances on Disruptor 50 list: 0
Flock Safety, a police tech company from Atlanta, kicked off intense competition in the crime-fighting business this year. Flock Safety sells surveillance technology, including light-post mounted cameras, license plate reading systems, and drones, to police departments, private sector companies and communities concerned about crime.
Flock Safety says its technology was used in 10% of all successful crime investigations in the country, and in the successful recovery of more than 1,000 missing persons. Recently, its system was used to help find a missing person with dementia in Indianola, Iowa, after an alert from a license plate camera. In another success story, Flock helped track down an armed man in New Mexico, who was wanted on suspicion of a shooting in Oklahoma.
Flock has a new coffer to help its growth: It recently announced a $275 million round and 2024 revenue of $300 million, a 70% year-over-year increase. With investors including Tiger Global, a16z, and Matrix Partners, Flock Safety's scale and growth position it for an IPO within the next few years. In October 2024, Flock Safety acquired Aerodome, a pioneer in DFR technology for aerial surveillance; it plans to build a 100,000 square foot drone manufacturing facility in Atlanta.
It is not just police departments using the technology. Flock Safety says it now works with seven of the 10 largest shopping malls in the U.S., and 10 out of 40 of the largest U.S. health-care providers. It continues to add customers from the public sector, last year bringing on major U.S. cities and state agencies as new customers, including Hempstead, NY, San Francisco, CA; Austin, TX; and the California Highway Patrol.
The established player in its industry is Axon, a publicly held company founded in 1993. With annual revenue over $2 billion and America's highest-paid CEO, according to a recent Wall Street Journal analysis, Axon is known for its Taser technology. But Axon is now following Flock Safety's lead, recently announcing that it is adding light post-hung video surveillance cameras and drones. It also announced a new collaboration with Amazon's camera company Ring.
The competition may come down to which company – others compete in the space as well, including Verkada, a Silicon Valley startup with a valuation of $4.5 billion, according to PitchBook – can spread the widest and easiest-to-use surveillance net that integrates information across public and private sectors and across America's fractured municipal police system.
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Mild US Inflation Is Backdrop for Fed's Powell on the Hill
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The fact is that these issues eliminate some of the attribution and targeting capabilities for a while but at the same time, that would bring balance to the situation by lessening the data advantages that some of the competitors had before. The way to deal with this threat is a concentration on those areas where the giants might not be as swift or/and comprehensive. The deep dive on the mobile gaming and app monetization areas by the company grants the right for more in-depth verticals and exactly tailor-made solutions rather than platform companies do. The optimization brought along with the AXON platform's automatic algorithms for the mobile app environment often results in better performance than generic ad solvers in the scope of new user quality and monetization efficiency. Competition from Specialist Ad Tech Companies The mobile advertising game is competitive with the participation of many niche players, each of whom has identified a particular slice of the market. Unity Technologies is one of them, in particular, because it uses its Unity Ads platform to operate in the same arena as mobile gaming ads and even leverage its game development engine to provide integrated advertising. IronSource (now part of Unity) used to be a significant adversary with its all-in-one platform that handled app monetization and user acquisition comprehensively. Chartboost has a very specific operation model that enables it to focus only on mobile game advertising, which includes direct publisher relationships and extensive knowledge of the gaming industry. Vungle (now part of Liftoff) is a firm that, through its video ad solutions, has added strong creative optimization capabilities. These companies are mostly known for their vibrant industry knowledge and long-standing partnerships defined within the industry sectors. However, these specialized players are giving a tough time with their niche focus, AppLovin is competing against them by bringing extra scale and high-level technology. The yield of billions and billions of ad requests daily makes the company to have the capacity of more effective machine learning optimizationin and standard machine learning schemes. AppLovin's user acquisition, monetization, and analytics in one solution platform and the simplicity of not having to carry out multiple integrations delivers accessibility and effectiveness over single point solutions that require integrations. Strengthened by the right acquisitions, the company is in a stronger position as it has consolidated its market share, and the potential competition was eliminated. The MoPub acquisition from Twitter gave AppLovin a digital publisher relationship and mediation capabilities while other small acquisitions enriched the tech stack and human resources, thus enhancing the platform. Key Risks Risks of Platform Dependency and Ecosystem Control AppLovin is at a high risk concerning the technological factors stemming from its reliance on mobile platforms governed by Apple and Google. Any iOS and Android platform policy changes can, in a matter of seconds, thus alter the way AppLovin operates. The real-time impact of the implementation of Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework proved this vulnerability when mobile advertisers immediately lost the ability to accurately attribute and target their ads. The prospective platform issues may involve more rigorous SDK approval processes, more privacy restrictions, or modified app store policies that will limit the advertising functionality altogether. For instance, the introduction of Private Relay in iOS 17 and the addition of enhanced tracking protection greatly narrow data collection capabilities. Although the Privacy Sandbox initiative from Android is still in progress, it poses a serious risk of redefining the way mobile advertising attribution and targeting are done. The technical risk branch out to the potential scenarios of platform fragmentation in which different versions of iOS or Android impose different privacy and advertising restrictions. AppLovin's single platform strategy is rendered more complex as it needs to reconcile with the different technical requirements caused by the braid of platform versions and geographic regions with various regulatory frameworks. Algorithmic and Machine Learning Model Vulnerabilities AXON's machine learning algorithms are the backbone of AppLovin's business edge as they grant a strongly concentrated technical risk around model performance and accuracy. The susceptibility of machine learning models to concept drift, where changing user behavior patterns or market conditions reduce the effectiveness of the model over time, is one of the most common reasons for this fall. The constant mutation of the mobile advertising ecosystem can make the previously useful alphas to be of no use whatsoever. Model bias is another highlight technical risk, this is when the algorithms inadvertently discriminate against some user segments or app categories, which in turn could result in regulatory violations or suboptimal performance outcomes. Attacks that are deceitful to the machine learning systems could influence either the bidding algorithms or the attribution models, which will in turn lead to financial losses and site degradation. The scenario of being data poisoned where the hackers introduce the useless and malicious data into the training datasets has the detrimental effect of degrading the performance of the models or creating vulnerabilities which can be exploited. The scale at which AppLovin is processing data, daily handling over billions of events, is making it more difficult to ensure comprehensive data validation while maintaining the real-time processing needs. The most serious of the risks that are created through overfitting is the one that comes from the models completely specializing in what has been done historically, thereby rendering the generalization capacities for new market conditions or user behaviors very weak. The high focus on the gaming vertical that has led to a competitive advantage could be detrimental if the gaming industry undergoes a drastic change. Valuation The forward P/E ratios for AppLovin portray impressive earnings acceleration with the non-GAAP P/E declining from 45.93x (FY1) to 27.69x (FY3), which suggests an impressive earnings increase, outstripping all but one peer company. It is the market's strong response that makes the compression evident, showing that it appreciates AppLovin's ability to grow the business while also keeping profitability up. The company's PEG ratios of 0.94 (non-GAAP forward) and 0.31 (GAAP TTM) are at a high level with respect to the growth rates making the stock very attractive, at least, it is significantly more attractive than peers like Adobe (1.35) and Cadence (3.09). This fact shows that the value of AppLovin is off the charts due to its markdown price based on its growth potential, which is further elaborated by the large upside that is now available. In contrast to industry rivals, AppLovin's valuation metrics look realistic even if the absolute P/E ratios are higher. Adobe and Cadence declare lesser P/E compression over time, while AppLovin shows signs of higher earnings growth. The absence of profit for a company like MasterCard (negative P/Es) contrasts sharply with AppLovin's prevailing profits in the ad-tech sector. Guru Holdings Lowenstein's 17.19% stake which is equivalent to $762.85 million shows tremendous conviction, especially if we take into consideration the average buy price that he had of $75.06, which is representing a 423.6% gain. Lowenstein's convincing position, which is large in size and yields excellent returns, is an evidence of AppLovin's strategic execution and its growth path. The 12.86% increase in the holdings that Lowenstein took just lately proves that he still has confidence in the company despite the stock's larger rise, which in turn shows that the bottom line is the company's fundamentals rather than the ups and downs of the market. Resnick's 13.47% stake ($740.26M) with an average cost basis of $49.41 (695.4% gain) represents even earlier conviction in AppLovin's transformation story. The stability of his holdings (0% recent change) indicates dissatisfaction with current positioning while maintaining long-term conviction. Both managers' five-star ratings and substantial outperformance demonstrate their investment expertise. ConclusionAppLovin faces strong competition from technology companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple. Google's AdMob platform and Ads ecosystem, coupled with its interconnectedness with Android, YouTube, and its advertising network, offer premium exposure and fine contracts. Facebook's Audience Network and vast data from social media enable precise user targeting and cross-platform campaign management. Apple's recent privacy policies, App Tracking Transparency (ATT), provide mixed-source benefits in the competition scene, but may limit data advantages. To address this threat, AppLovin focuses on mobile gaming and app monetization areas, offering tailored solutions rather than generic ad solvers. The AXON platform's automatic algorithms for the mobile app environment often result in better performance than generic ad solvers in terms of user quality and monetization efficiency. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Sign in to access your portfolio
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Amazon is the leader in two huge growth industries. MercadoLibre still has a lot of room for growth in both e-commerce and fintech. Axon is improving public safety and delivering monster returns to investors in the process. 10 stocks we like better than Amazon › Anyone who regularly saves and invests their money in the stock market can build wealth. Time in the market is more important than how much money you have to start. But dollar-cost averaging into a well-chosen portfolio of growth stocks can increase in value significantly over a few decades. To give you some ideas to get started, three Motley Fool contributors recently selected three competitively positioned companies to invest in today. Here's why they like Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), MercadoLibre (NASDAQ: MELI), and Axon Enterprise (NASDAQ: AXON). (Amazon): Amazon has changed many lives in many ways, from providing essential e-commerce services that have reimagined shopping habits to creating incredible shareholder wealth for early investors. That kind of growth isn't likely to happen again, but there's so much more opportunity for Amazon, and smart investors can still buy shares today to see their investments thrive. Amazon is the top name in two different industries, an incredible feat for a company that started out as an online bookseller. It has the lead in U.S. e-commerce by a wide margin, with no chance of any competitor taking over in the foreseeable future. Plus, it's continually upgrading its platform to keep it that way. Deliveries are getting faster; it's adding new products and brands to the marketplace, including luxury brands Michael Kors and Laura Mercier in the first quarter, and it's using technology like robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance its systems. 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With a market cap of $60 billion and trading at high multiples of sales and earnings, the stock looks expensive. However, Axon also continues to report robust growth that points to a monster opportunity in improving public safety. Axon is known for its TASER stun devices, which remain in high demand after more than two decades. TASER revenue grew 19% year over year in the first quarter, and the TASER 10 is significantly outpacing sales of previous models. But Axon is more than just products. It offers a growing portfolio of software and services, including a cloud-based platform that helps officers store and manage evidence. Revenue from software and services grew 39% year over year last quarter, making up 43% of Axon's total revenue. The growth in services is accomplishing two important things for Axon's business. Its software offerings are widening its competitive moat and improving margins. Revenue from services generates a high 74% gross margin, compared to 50% from sales of devices. This is fueling robust growth in earnings, which are expected to grow 21% over the next several years. Axon is offering a complete platform with products and software for law enforcement to do their work more efficiently and smarter. The stock may have to settle in the near term, given the high valuation, but the company's addressable market is expanding with its push into cloud-based services, which should make the company a lot more valuable in another 20 years than it is today. Before you buy stock in Amazon, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Amazon wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $659,171!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $891,722!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 995% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025 John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Jennifer Saibil has positions in MercadoLibre. Jeremy Bowman has positions in Amazon, Axon Enterprise, and MercadoLibre. John Ballard has positions in MercadoLibre. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Axon Enterprise, and MercadoLibre. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. 3 Life-Changing Stocks to Buy Today was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
