RapidSOS, founded in 2012, has raised $250 million and serves more than 15,000 public safety agencies across four continents.
Venture capital firm NightDragon led this latest funding round. Dave DeWalt, founder and managing partner of NightDragon, will join the RapidSOS board.
NightDragon focuses on what a statement from RapidSOS called “late-stage, high-growth cybersecurity, safety, security and privacy companies.” DeWalt has worked as CEO for digital security companies McAfee and FireEye.
“The RapidSOS team has worked diligently for more than a decade on its vision and technology platform to better enable public safety officials and technology companies to respond to emergency situations of all types,” DeWalt said in a statement about the new funding. “The time for digital transformation in this sector has never been more important, and NightDragon is proud to help accelerate this mission as an investor and help RapidSOS continue to change the world and save lives.”
The most recent RapidSOS funding round also included BAM Elevate, Insight Partners, Honeywell, M12 (Microsoft's venture fund), Axon, Citi via the Citi Impact Fund, Highland Capital Partners, Playground Global, Forte Ventures, C5 Capital and Avanta Ventures.
Among the tools sold by RapidSOS is a platform that can handle what the company calls “professional monitoring, voice and data emergency response services."
The new investment for RapidSOS comes amid robust funding and activity in the gov tech market in general. In the third quarter, for instance, gov tech transaction volume hit $2.1 billion, according to a new analysis from Government Technology contributor Jeff Cook. That is essentially flat compared to the third quarter last year.
While that analysis does include signs that some gov tech activity could slow down in late 2022 and early 2023, the public safety market continues to expand and take on new relationships and technologies, as RapidSOS has shown.
For example, the company in August announced that Lemonade, an online insurance firm, will use the RapidSOS platform to support Lemonade Car’s emergency services feature.
