Kiwi retail crime intelligence firm Auror raises $82 million from Taser maker, grocery giants

Auror, an Auckland-based maker of crime reporting and prevention software, has raised $82 million in a Series C venture capital (VC) round – one of the largest for a Kiwi firm - at a valuation north of $500m.

If, say, a group of three people shoplift items from a supermarket then run out the door, the store can use Auror templates to quickly file a report with head office and police, including the likes of a snippet of CCTV footage, stills from facial or number plate recognition systems, and witness statements.

Auror uses templates to speed up reports of retail crime and build suspect profiles, which a store shares with its head office and police.

Auror co-founder and CEO Phil Thomson says it can save a retailer like Woolworths or Z Energy one to two hours in filing time, and police one to seven hours per incident.

A study by Sense Partners found in the 12 months to June 2023, police realised $92m and 170,000 hours of savings through workforce efficiency gains by investigating crime and requesting information more efficiently via Auror – a sum that, on paper at least, would fund another 450 police officers.

Where’s the prevention element if our supermarket offenders simply legged it?

“A lot of retail crime is very well-organised,” Thomson says.

Around 10% of offenders are responsible for 60% of losses. Auror’s information helps retailers and police establish who the offenders are, and their patterns of offending – important as many gangs aim to execute multiple heists in a day, whether that’s dramatic ram raids or quieter shoplifting.

“Proceeds go to guns, drugs and gangs,” he says.

Phil Thomson hadn't worked in retail or software before co-founding Auror. He worked for a big law firm, specialising in intellectual property and privacy issues.

The funds will bankroll a further push into the US, co-founder and chief executive Phil Thomson says.

More artificial intelligence tools will also be added, though Thomson. “We focus on responsible AI. It can make a workflow 10 times faster, but we want to keep a human in the loop.”

An Auror AI might be able to make connections between crimes that elude an investigator sifting through millions of lines of spreadsheet entries, he says.

The new investors

The raise was led by two new investors, Axon Enterprise (formerly Taser International) and W23, plus returning Sydney VC fund Reinventure, which includes Westpac as its largest limited partner.

Nasdaq-listed Axon – which has a US$46 billion ($77b) market cap – invented the Taser in the 1970s. In the 2000s it expanded into bodycams, then computer-aided dispatch software and a cloud-based digital evidence platform. The firm was already an Auror technology partner.

W23 is a venture fund backed by five grocery retailers: Tesco (UK, Ireland, Europe), Woolworths Group (Australia and New Zealand), Shoprite Group (Africa), Sobeys (Canada) and Ahold Delhaize (US, Europe and Indonesia).

Auror’s Retail Crime Intelligence Platform works with automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology to alert a retailer if a suspect vehicle is approaching their business.

Auror already has a substantial beachhead in North America. “Walmart in the US is one of our flagship customers,” Thomson says. (All up, his firm works with some 45,000 retail stores worldwide.)

Yet the US has a much more complicated landscape on the law enforcement side.

Auror has a close relationship with law enforcement in New Zealand – smoothed by the fact we have a single police force.

The US, by contrast, has some 18,000 agencies going down to the county level, Thomson says.

That’s where Axon could have a key role in opening doors.

“They sell Tasers or bodycams to almost every police force in the US – and the UK and elsewhere.”

Another aspect of the US market is “most of those police forces will have different systems that don’t talk to each other”, Thomson says.

“If you’re a criminal, you’re going across different county lines and state lines, and so historically, that hasn’t been actually connected together.” He sees that as an opportunity.

Auror Licence Plate Recognition.

Thomson is mum on financials but says its revenue, of which 85% is earned offshore, grew by 150% between 2022 and 2024.

He says the firm got profitable before its $30m Series B raise in 2021, led by local VC firm Movac. Other investors include Shasta Ventures, Global From Day One, the Crown-backed NZ Growth Capital Partners (NZGCP) via its Aspire fund and Sir Stephen Tindall’s ubiquitous K1W1.

“We still have really high conviction in the company but given our funding model – that is, our investments and operating costs are paid entirely out of Aspire realisations – we decided to take the opportunity to take some money off the table during this round,” NZGCP chief investment officer James Pinner told the Herald.

The tough venture capital market and economic slowdown notwithstanding, NZGCP is on something of a roll. It recently realised a $37m profit from its early investment in education software maker Kami.

“Auror has already delivered back to us well over 10 times the total capital we invested since 2014 – which will now be reinvested into the next generation of the most promising Kiwi start-ups" - James Pinner, chief investment officer at the Crown-backed NZGCP.

Pinner won’t give a dollar figure for Auror, but says “Auror has already delivered back to us well over 10 times the total capital we invested since 2014.”

“Part of this round was about making room for those new investors and allowing some of those early shareholders to take some off the table,” Thomson says. “NZGCP’s first investment was back in 2014 and it’s been a really good return for them. They’re not taking out all of their stake. But it’s a mark of success that we’ve been able to generate that return for them, that they could get and invested back into new Kiwi companies.”

“We also worked with our team to sell down some of the Esop [employee stock ownership programme], realising some of that financial security.”

A dystopian Big Brother?

In July, Australia’s Office of the Australian Information Commissioner started making ‘preliminary inquiries’ after Australian Federal Police said they had started using Auror’s platform without conducting a proper privacy review first.

Auror says the OAIC dropped its probe last month.

Thomson stresses his firm doesn’t operate any cameras. “We make reporting software,” he says.

He pitches that privacy is part of the firm’s DNA.

He didn’t work in software, retail or law enforcement before co-founding Auror in 2012. Rather, he worked as an associate at law firm Simpson Grierson, specialising in intellectual property and privacy.

He argues a “secure, online evidence locker” used with Auror better protects privacy than the mix of written reports, documents and USB sticks used previously.

And while automated number plate recognition has raised concerns about privacy abuse (notably when police used it to illegally track two suspects during Covid lockdowns), Thomson says when it’s paired with Auror’s platform, it has a positive social benefit.

He says Auror customer Z Energy reduced its losses from drive-aways by 73% after introducing number plate recognition.

Attendants no longer had to make a value judgment based on their perception of how a customer looked. The licence plate detection made it black and white. If a vehicle was a previous drive-away, they did not get pre-pay. “It removes bias.”

Thomson adds that 20% of retail crime involves aggression or violence – which he says Auror can help to tamp down.

“If you imagine who’s in those stores, it might be a 16-year-old on the checkout doing their first fulltime job or a 60-year-old who’s been doing it for 30 or 40 years. They’re the ones on the front line being impacted by this emotionally and physically.”

‘We’ve chosen to keep our R&D here’

The firm has 220 staff worldwide, including 80 hired over the past 12 months, Thomson says. Some 150 are based in Auckland, where research and development work takes place.

Around 40 are in an office in Denver. The firm has also opened an office in London.

While ambitions are global, the core R&D team - established in Morningside in 2012 - will stay local, Thomson says.

“We’ve chosen to keep our R&D here. We believe in the New Zealand ecosystem,” Thomson says.

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.