Flock Safety's CEO to discuss surveillance debate at TC Disrupt

The debate over where to draw the line between privacy and public safety has intensified in the AI era, and Flock Safety — a company that has drawn both a surge of investment and intense public backlash — sits at the center of it. TechCrunch is bringing Flock’s founder and CEO, Garrett Langley, to the stage at Disrupt 2026 for a hard-hitting conversation on AI, surveillance, and the future of public safety, expected to prove illuminating to both the company’s supporters and its critics. The event runs October 13–15 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, alongside 10,000 other founders, investors, tech enthusiasts, and innovators.

Atlanta-based Flock isn’t Langley’s first startup. He previously worked on the car-subscription service Clutch and the platform Experience, where he oversaw several teams, including engineering and design, before Experience sold to Cox Enterprises for $200 million in 2014. Flock started in 2017, with Langley partnering with co-founders Matt Feury and Paige Todd, going through Y Combinator before finding significant success selling surveillance technology to businesses and law enforcement agencies. The company is often associated with license-plate recognition, though it now offers more general-use surveillance cameras and has been developing drone first responders following its acquisition of Aerodome.

Flock’s business has scaled quickly. Its most recent fundraise, a $275 million round last year, placed the company at a $7.5 billion valuation — a sharp jump from the prior year’s $4.8 billion. Altogether, Flock has raised $950 million in total funding since it was founded.

That growth has come alongside sustained pushback from privacy advocates, including the ACLU, and members of the public — some of whom have gone as far as destroying Flock’s surveillance cameras — as the company continues offering its cameras and databases to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in particular. Among its more visible setbacks, Amazon’s Ring recently ended a partnership with Flock, and the Los Angeles Police Department let its deal with the company lapse this month.

Why it matters

Langley’s Disrupt appearance puts a leading surveillance-tech CEO in front of an audience directly weighing how AI reshapes both public safety and civil liberties, at a moment when Flock’s own government partnerships are drawing scrutiny from multiple directions.