Verkada's cloud-security bet: $5.8B valuation and an Nvidia investment

Verkada sells cloud-managed physical security: video cameras, door access, alarms, environmental sensors and intercoms running on one cloud dashboard, sold as hardware plus software subscription.

That physical security would follow IT to the cloud: one subscription platform combining cameras, access, sensors and alarms, then AI search across all the video.

Filip Kaliszan and co-founders launched Verkada in 2016 'with the vision to modernize the world of physical security — one of the last industries to experience a migration from on-premise solutions to cloud-based software,' as Kaliszan put it in the 2022 Series D announcement.

By September 2022 Verkada had raised over $360M, was valued at $3.2B in a $205M Series D led by Linse Capital, and served 13,000+ organizations after quadrupling its customer count since January 2020. A February 2025 Series E valued it at $4.5B; a December 2025 round led by Alphabet's CapitalG lifted the valuation to $5.8B as the company crossed $1B in annualized bookings. On 2026-06-30 Nvidia took an undisclosed equity stake and a technical partnership, pairing Verkada's platform with Nvidia Cosmos world models and synthetic-data tools; Verkada says accuracy on spatial-temporal video-search queries climbed 68%.

Verkada is private and scaling: 2.4M connected devices across 30,000 organizations in 170+ countries, Nvidia as a new investor, and search interest still rising through September 2026.

Category timing: founded in 2016 as cloud migration finally reached physical security; incumbents sold hardware boxes and licenses while Verkada sold one integrated subscription.

Platform stacking: cameras pulled in access control, sensors and alarms, so each new product line added recurring revenue to the same cloud dashboard.

Data moat: a decade of cameras produced proprietary video at physical-AI scale; Nvidia's partnership and the reported +68% search-accuracy gain show the data, not hardware, is the defensible asset.

Search-rising evidence: ~135K monthly searches and top-trending status in September 2026 confirm outside demand is still growing.

One cloud subscription instead of boxes and licenses won enterprises; a decade of device data then became the moat for AI search — every added camera makes the product stronger.

As of 2026-09-04 Verkada remains private and in expansion mode: 2.4M connected devices across 30,000 organizations in 170+ countries, Nvidia as a strategic investor, and ~135K monthly searches making it Exploding Topics' top trending software startup for September 2026. The 2021 breach of ~150,000 camera feeds — hackers reached cameras in hospitals, schools and workplaces — remains the cautionary chapter in its history. The company's push into AI search now runs through Nvidia's Cosmos models, with physical AI positioned as the next growth layer beyond the core security subscription.