In New Zealand, thousands of privately-owned CCTV cameras link to Auror's software system, which police access over 500 times a day. Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
New Zealand's largest operator of number-plate recognition software has raised over $80 million to expand.
The Australian Financial Review, calling Auror a "controversial $500m anti-crime start-up", reported the transaction brought Auror's valuation up to half a billion dollars.
Auckland-based Auror is a close partner with New Zealand police, that also sells its retail crime-fighting services in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.
"This latest raise allows us to continue our work around the world, using technology to tackle retail crime at scale," said Auror co-founder and chief executive Phil Thomson on the company website.
"Ultimately, retail crime is a city killer."
In New Zealand, thousands of privately-owned CCTV cameras nationwide link to its software system, which police access over 500 times a day. The police pay a small fee, court documents showed.
Auror said independent economists had estimated that was equivalent to adding over 450 officers to the beat.
This created nearly $100m in productivity savings, and over 170,000 hours of "capability uplift", it said.
The latest funding round has been led in part by taser-maker and one of the world's largest suppliers of body-worn cameras, Axon, whose products and services New Zealand police also use a lot.
Crown agency New Zealand Trade and Enterprise backed Auror's early global expansion via its international growth fund.
Auror, which calls itself a crime intelligence reporting software platform, has 200 staff in five countries.
A series of legal challenges against New Zealand police using number-plate identifications gathered by Auror's system as evidence in court, have failed recently. A court ruled the technology simply sped up what police were having to do before, manually - spotting vehicles as part of investigations - without the public questioning it.
Auror in mid-year announced a "global integration, US focused" with Axon, to link its systems further to Axon's bodycam and data storage systems.
The US company based in Arizona's Maricopa County - which was recently called "ground zero for election misinformation in 2024" by the Arizona Mirror - has witnessed its capitalisation on the tech-heavy Nasdaq triple in a year to over $75 billion.
"By partnering with Auror ... we can strengthen collaboration between retail and law enforcement," Axon said in the capital-raising PR.
Many police forces, including New Zealand's, store video footage in Axon's evidence.com data-storage system.
Another leader of Auror's capital raising was a venture capital fund backed by the Woolworths supermarket chain, W23 Global. Woolworths this year began adding bodycams at all its New Zealand supermarkets, but using a Singaporean system, not Axon's.