New York-based Firefly has emerged from stealth with $20 million in Series A financing to develop an AI-powered platform connecting physical security hardware, real-time information and emergency response workflows.
The round was led by Definition Capital, with significant participation from BoxGroup and continued backing from Susa Ventures, which previously led the company's seed financing.
Founded in 2024 by CEO James Batt Buckley and CTO Alex Penn, Firefly combines experience in enterprise security hardware and consumer technology.
Buckley previously worked at Verkada, where he helped expand the company's alarms business from educational institutions to large enterprise customers. Penn graduated from MIT and spent nearly a decade at Apple, leading engineering teams responsible for bringing hardware and software products to market.
Firefly is targeting a persistent problem in physical security operations: most organizations rely on disconnected systems to understand incidents and coordinate responses.
Cameras record activity, radios support communication and sensors generate alerts, but interpreting that information often requires people to move between multiple interfaces and manually coordinate what happens next.
Firefly is building a system that brings those functions together.
Its platform combines purpose-built hardware, AI software and existing equipment, including cameras and radio networks, to create a shared operational view of physical environments.
The technology is designed to analyze signals from different sources, identify potential incidents and help security teams respond with more relevant information.
Rather than focusing exclusively on identifying threats, Firefly aims to automate routine operational work and coordinate responses across personnel and infrastructure.
The company says its technology is already being used at Front Range Community College, Colorado's largest community college, where it is connecting safety information across three campuses.
That deployment provides an early example of its target market: organizations responsible for protecting people across multiple buildings or locations.
The broader opportunity extends to universities, corporate campuses and other environments with complex physical operations.
Firefly is entering a market where traditional surveillance and alarm vendors are increasingly incorporating AI-based video analytics and automated incident detection.
Its differentiation will depend on combining information across systems and improving the coordination of actual responses, rather than providing another stream of automated alerts.
The technology also creates privacy and operational concerns. AI systems used in physical security must minimize false alarms, protect sensitive information and provide appropriate human oversight when incidents could affect people's safety.
Firefly has not publicly disclosed revenue, customer counts or quantified reductions in emergency response times alongside the funding announcement.
Its next test is whether the company can demonstrate measurable operational improvements in real deployments and turn its integrated approach into a scalable business.