SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — For Axon Enterprise, having its new chief software executive accompany police officers on midnight ride-alongs and sit inside a 911 dispatch center isn’t just part of his job initiation. It’s also an indicator of where the company, known for Tasers, body-worn cameras and, more recently, enterprise software for law enforcement, is headed.
In September Jeff Kunins joined Axon from Amazon, where he was vice president of Alexa Entertainment. “He’s my software soulmate,” says Rick Smith, co-founder and CEO of the Scottsdale, Arizona-based company, which also has a Seattle office and has been drawing employees from big tech firms for the past few years.
“I came up building Taser weapons in my garage. As we extended into software and cameras, things I didn’t personally come up with, I didn’t have that level of personal expertise — that’s where Jeff fits in,” said Smith.
Read more: Taser-maker Axon is looking a lot more like Apple, Amazon, and so is the future of law enforcement
About Axon
In April 2017 we changed our corporate name to Axon, after many years of operating as TASER International. Our mission to protect life endures, but we’re going about it in new ways—with Smart Weapons that protect life in the moment of conflict, cameras that depict the truth and help prevent civil unrest, and automated reporting and evidence management that will triple the amount of time officers can spend serving their communities.
Today, more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies in 100+ countries around the world are part of the Axon network. That sounds big, but we’ve never forgotten where we started, and the scrappy, garage-style pursuit of big goals continues to get us out of bed each day.