Axon CPTO on Building AI for Law Enforcement, Selling to Governments, and Using the Body Cam and Taser to Save Lives at Scale

In this episode of The Product Podcast by Product School, Carlos González de Villaumbrosia sits down with Jeff Kunins, Chief Product Officer and Chief Technology Officer at Axon, the company that created the Taser and the body cameras federal agencies wear.

Axon ingests more video per year than YouTube, and with a market cap of approximately $32.9 billion and $2.78 billion in revenue, growing 33% year over year, it is one of the highest-growth companies in the S&P 500.

What you'll learn:

• How law enforcement agencies are using AI inside body cameras and Tasers to save lives, not just hit metrics.

• Why Axon declared a public moratorium on facial recognition AI for six years and what finally changed.

• How Axon embeds external activists and researchers directly into product manager squads as a design input, not a compliance process.

• Building first-party AI models for real-time license plate detection while using foundation LLMs for everything else.

Key takeaways:

• Axon created the Taser and the body cam, and now ingests more video per year than YouTube. Most people have never heard of them.

• Build only what you must to be differentiated. Everything else, license from the best available source.

• Ethics review is not a compliance burden. When embedded in the product lifecycle, external critics help you see around corners and design better products.

Credits:
Host: Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia
Guest: Jeff Kunins