The original report, from The Information, describes a potential deal worth at least $800 million, and says the talks are “advanced.”
Neither Axon nor Prepared immediately responded Friday to requests for comment from Government Technology.
Prepared, which raised $80 million earlier this year — and more than $130 million since its founding in 2019 — has positioned itself as an assistive AI company for emergency call centers.
Its offerings include two-way audio translation and 911 livestreaming, tools designed to ease the burden of stressed and reduced call center staffs and to make emergency responses safer and more efficient. Axon has a translation product for police officers and a platform for real-time crime centers, tools that can pull together data from video and other sources.
Prepared has such backers as venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital and General Catalyst, none of which responded immediately to requests for comment.
Meanwhile, as Axon reportedly considers taking a piece of the 911 call center business, the company’s stock was trading at around $770 on Friday afternoon, up from about $389 a year ago. Last year, the company got into the retail space via its Axon Body Workforce offering — that is, body cameras for retail workers.
For the second quarter of 2025, Axon reported a 33 percent year-over-year increase in revenue, to $669 million.
Should the deal go through, it would reflect the robust nature of public safety technology within the larger gov tech industry.
Various factors account for that growth, not the least of which is AI taking on more work for law enforcement and other emergency personnel, and state and local officials searching for ways to deal with ongoing worker shortages among police and emergency call takers and dispatchers. Ongoing moves to the cloud and a national upgrade of 911 technology also are fueling the growth.
Even as all that happens, backlash is building to some of the new tools being sold by public safety tech suppliers — products that can seem biased or dangerous for civil rights to detractors.
But that’s not scaring away investors.
They recently have pumped, for instance, $100 million of fresh capital into emergency communications tech firm Carbyne, and $355 million into First Due, which sells software to fire, EMS and other agencies.
Such funding comes amid general growth in gov tech, as seen earlier this month by the initial public offering for Via Transportation, a transit management software provider.
Via joined Axon and a handful of other companies in gov tech that have gone public.
