Firefly raises $20 million to expand AI-powered safety platform

NEW YORK—Firefly, a physical artificial intelligence (AI) company focused on safety and security applications, has raised $20 million in Series A funding in a round led by Definition Capital, with participation from BoxGroup and continued backing from Susa Ventures. 

Founded in 2024 by James Batt Buckley and Alex Penn, Firefly is developing a platform that combines purpose-built hardware, AI-powered software and existing security infrastructure into a single system designed to help organizations detect incidents, automate operations and coordinate responses in real time. 

Buckley previously helped scale the alarms business at Verkada, while Penn spent nearly a decade at Apple leading engineering teams and bringing products to market. 

Firefly said its platform connects technologies such as cameras and radios, extracting intelligence from multiple data sources to provide greater situational awareness and operational efficiency for safety teams. 

“We've accepted a strange contradiction in safety technology: the more important the job, the more complicated the tools seem to become,” Buckley said. “We now have the technology to build something fundamentally different. Our goal is to give the people responsible for safety extraordinary capabilities, while keeping them firmly in control.” 

The company said its technology is already being used at Front Range Community College in Colorado, where it helps safety personnel monitor and coordinate response activities across three campuses. 

Firefly said the funding will support development of new physical AI products, hiring across engineering, machine learning and go-to-market teams, and expansion into the education, healthcare and enterprise sectors. 

“The stakes around physical safety have never been higher,” said Teddy Citrin of Definition Capital. “At the same time, advances in AI and hardware are making it possible to rethink how organizations protect their people.”