James Batt Buckley spent years at Verkada watching schools and Fortune 500 companies cobble together disparate safety systems—cameras from one vendor, panic buttons from another, fire alarms that didn't talk to either. The workflow gaps frustrated him. More than that, they seemed dangerous.
So in 2024, Buckley and Alex Penn, an engineer who'd worked at Apple and holds a U.S. patent from his MIT days, launched Firefly. The Manhattan-based startup has since closed a seed round with backing from Susa Ventures, aiming to do what legacy players haven't: build an AI-native platform that actually unifies the chaos.
Firefly calls its offering "Ember"—a software-and-hardware package that marries panic buttons, gunshot detection sensors, cameras, access control, and fire systems into one orchestrated workflow. The target customers span K-12 schools, hospitals, hotels, and retail chains. Anyone, in other words, wrestling with the same fragmented infrastructure Buckley encountered at Verkada.
Firefly has raised $6.5 million, according to its Wellfound profile, though neither the company nor Susa Ventures has provided official details about the round structure. What's public is the ambition: replace the patchwork with a single layer, AI-powered and hardware-enabled, that doesn't require rewiring an entire building to install.
The Hardware Play
Firefly's pitch hinges on hardware designed for speed. The panic buttons and gunshot detection units run on five-year batteries, resist weather, and communicate via multi-path radio with LTE and battery backup built in. According to the company, the system can be deployed at scale within 24 hours—using AI-driven site mapping to import assets and configure emergency protocols without stringing new cables through ceilings.
That matters in a market where installation timelines and wiring costs often kill deals before they start.
The software side is equally assertive. Ember features 3D site mapping, mass communications that span SMS, email, voice calls, and app notifications, plus direct integration with emergency medical services and 911 dispatch. An "AI Response Agent," as Firefly describes it, sits at the center—routing alerts, triggering lockdowns, summoning first responders. The goal is automation in the moments when human decision-making slows to a crawl.
Firefly has exhibited at industry events for retail loss prevention, signaling that its ambitions extend beyond the education and healthcare sectors where alarm fatigue and regulatory pressure have created the most obvious openings. Retail, with its unique blend of theft, violence, and liability exposure, represents a different kind of safety challenge—one the startup appears eager to tackle.
A Crowded, High-Stakes Arena
Firefly isn't alone in chasing this opportunity. The global incident and emergency management market hit $131.9 billion in 2024, per Grand View Research, and is projected to reach $218 billion by 2033. Gunshot detection alone—a narrower slice—is expected to nearly double from $942 million in 2024 to $1.81 billion by 2031, according to industry projections.
Competitors have attracted serious capital. ZeroEyes, which focuses on AI-powered gun detection, raised a $53 million Series B in mid-2024. Flock Safety, known for its license-plate-reading cameras and broader public safety tech, closed a $275 million round in early 2025 at a $7.5 billion valuation. Meanwhile, Motorola Solutions—an incumbent with deep pockets—acquired Rave Mobile Safety, a mass notification provider, back in late 2022, tightening its grip on emergency communications.
That competitive landscape suggests both validation and risk. The money flowing into physical safety tech confirms demand, but it also means Firefly will need to differentiate quickly. Its bet: that unification matters more than best-of-breed components, and that AI can stitch together what integrators have struggled to for years.
Scaling the Team, Building the Channel
Firefly is hiring. The company's LinkedIn profile shows an employee range of 11 to 50, with open roles spanning design, engineering, and go-to-market. Exact numbers fluctuate, as they do at early-stage startups where every hire reshapes the org chart.
Beyond direct sales, Firefly is also assembling a partner program aimed at integrators and resellers—the installers and consultants who ultimately configure safety systems for end customers. The pitch to partners: recurring revenue streams and a simpler installation process that doesn't involve fishing wire through drop ceilings. For facilities managers tired of juggling vendor relationships, that consolidated approach could prove compelling. Or it could collide with entrenched relationships and the inertia that keeps legacy systems humming, however inefficiently.
The Wager
Strip away the jargon and Firefly is making a straightforward bet: that the next generation of physical safety infrastructure will look less like a Frankenstein's monster of bolted-on systems and more like a single, intelligent platform. AI-first, hardware-light, fast to deploy.
Whether schools, hospitals, and retailers agree—and whether Firefly can execute at the speed and scale required to outrun better-funded rivals—remains an open question. The founders bring credibility: Buckley's Verkada tenure gave him a front-row view of enterprise safety sales, and Penn's Apple background signals serious engineering chops. Susa Ventures, an early backer of Robinhood and Flexport, lends its own form of validation.
But credibility and capital only get you so far in a market where the stakes are measured in lives, not just dollars. Firefly will need to prove that its unified vision isn't just elegant in a pitch deck—it has to work when the alarms actually go off.
