The Scoop
The company that makes Tasers is looking to arm CEOs’ security teams with its “less lethal” weapons, as executives worry about their safety after the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s Brian Thompson.
“Over the next year, you might start to hear more about certain CEOs being protected by Taser,” said Josh Isner, president of Axon Enterprise, who said his business had received several inquiries from companies since Thompson’s fatal shooting in December. In addition to the signature weapon it sells to law enforcement, Isner told Semafor the company was developing “more covert” devices that could be worn more comfortably in “an executive security type of scenario.”
Axon told investors on an earnings call last week that corporate customers represented one of its largest growth opportunities. It has separately begun to sell them equipment to defend their headquarters, warehouses, and other facilities against drone attacks, Isner said.
“Think about how easy it is to equip a drone with something bad and fly it into something,” he said. Customers listed on a website for Dedrone, the counter-drone defense technology Axon recently acquired, include the utility Consolidated Edison and auto racing group Nascar.
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The killing of Thompson, who led UnitedHealth Group’s insurance arm, sent a wave of concern through corporate America, with police officers patrolling some CEOs’ homes and several executives appearing in public with security details for the first time. Security firms reported receiving hundreds of calls on how best to protect high-profile business leaders.
Axon, which last week reported that its annual revenues had doubled over the past two years to $2.1 billion, is expanding into the enterprise, international, and federal government markets after years of being best known for supplying US police forces.
Investors’ hopes for growth in such areas have lifted its market capitalization more than sixfold over the past five years to $40 billion. That increase, coupled with a “moonshot” incentive plan modeled on Elon Musk’s compensation package at Tesla, has made Axon CEO Rick Smith a billionaire. Isner, whose compensation hit $31 million in 2023, said more than 100 colleagues had become millionaires from the plan.
Axon said during the earnings call last week that it had signed the largest deal in its history with a customer in the logistics industry, which it did not name. Retailers have also fueled its enterprise revenues, as they equip employees with body cameras to control heightened levels of theft from their stores and assaults on their staff. Axon agreed what Isner called “an eight-figure deal” with Loblaws, Canada’s largest supermarket chain, last year, and offers AI-driven processing of video feeds from in-store security cameras.
President Donald Trump is seeking deep cuts to federal spending through the new Department of Government Efficiency, fronted by the Tesla CEO. But Isner said he believed DOGE could “level the playing field” with traditional defense contractors and create more opportunities for “disruptive” technology companies such as Axon.
“Our customers are rethinking the money they’re spending on legacy programs that may be defunct or may not be working as well. And to me, that presents an opportunity for companies like us and Palantir and Anduril and some of these newer-generation technology companies,” he said.
Notable
- The success of the “less lethal” weapon that Axon sells as a way to “stop a threat without taking a life” has come with a toll of its own, Reuters found. Still, Isner argues that “the chances of dying from a Taser exposure are less than the chances of dying from playing high school sports.”