Key Takeaways
- A16z backs Flock’s surveillance network while its crypto arm champions financial privacy.
- Flock has faced growing backlash, with hundreds of contracts terminated amid privacy concerns.
- The contrasting investments highlight a tension between public safety, surveillance and privacy.
A16z Stance On Privacy And Flock Explained
As the fight over Flock automated license plate readers (ALPRs) heats up in the U.S., with protests, new and terminated contracts, cameras removed by citizens, and lawsuits, A16z continues to defend its investment in the company. On Sept. 10, for example, David Ulevitch, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz who led investments in Flock, accused Reason magazine of “posting clickbait to enrage people” after the outlet mentioned Flock in a post about surveillance cameras. Meanwhile, on Sept. 1, the official @a16z account posted a video titled “Flock eliminates crime. Decline is a choice,” defending the company and explaining how it helps fight crime.
Vigilant Protections and Partner Stalking
“Flock is the bridge that can take us from the subjective policing of the past to the more objective policing of the future, where crimes are solved, criminals deterred, and innocent communities protected,” Ulevitch and Alex Immerman, another general partner at A16z, wrote in a piece defending Flock in April.
According to them, “surveillance” or “privacy concerns” overlook “the vigilant protections in place to ensure that Flock cannot be used for surveillance or to violate privacy.”
In August, The Washington Post identified 46 cases of officers accused of using Flock for unauthorized purposes, including stalking partners.
A16z has invested in Flock since 2021, joining multiple investment rounds. The ALPR network company told Fortune in April that it had raised $500 million, surpassing $1.2 billion in total funding and valuing the business at $8.3 billion. The report said Flock crossed $500 million in annual recurring revenue in the first half of this year.
A16z Crypto Calls to End ‘The Era of Mass Financial Surveillance’
At the same time, A16z’s investment portfolio includes multiple startups focused on strengthening people’s privacy, including financial privacy. These include Nym Technologies, developer of a virtual private network that aims to prevent sensitive data leaks through existing internet protocols; XMTP, an encrypted messaging protocol; Aleo, a platform “designed to facilitate absolute privacy on blockchains”; and Aztec, a protocol that enables private transactions across Ethereum, among others.
This year, A16z also backed Zcash Open Development Lab, a team focused on developing Zcash, one of the top privacy coins.
These crypto-related investments were made by A16z crypto, a different team from the one that invested in Flock. However, Flock and the privacy companies are all listed in A16z’s investment portfolio.
Besides providing funding, A16z crypto has publicly supported technologies designed to protect online and financial privacy. In a 2025 blog post, the company called to end “the era of mass financial surveillance.”
“We do not need to accept the government’s pervasive invasion of our financial privacy,” the post said, urging the government to encourage financial institutions to adopt blockchains.
On DeFi Tools and Tornado Cash
In an earlier piece, they asked: “May the government restrict such DeFi tools, and force people to use third-party intermediaries, precisely to take advantage of the extra surveillance power that the third-party doctrine would provide?”
That doctrine says information loses its privacy protection once you share it with a third party. It also allows police to search Flock’s camera records without a warrant.
Also, reacting to the government’s actions against the Tornado Cash mixer in 2022, A16z crypto argued that the Treasury should have pushed for better technical fixes rather than sanctioning the protocol outright, as it “had some technical controls in place” to guard against illicit use. The paper, Privacy-Protecting Regulatory Solutions Using Zero-Knowledge Proofs, while not disputing that illicit money moved through the protocol, also argued that Tornado Cash sanctions hurt innocent people.
Endangered Expansion
Examples of financial privacy-supporting statements by A16z can go on and on, as can the list of statements supporting Flock’s surveillance network. Meanwhile, legal and regulatory fights are ongoing on both fronts, which could affect financial and online privacy as well as Flock’s business and, in turn, A16z’s investments.
Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley said in July that the company was in 7,000 cities and wanted its cameras in every one of America’s 17,000 cities. In June, the company said its network included more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states.
According to Secure Justice data, at least 220 contracts with Flock had been terminated as of Aug. 28, 2026, while terminations accelerated in August.
Two Bets and Search for Compromises
As the expansion plans now face greater uncertainty, Langley said in an interview with Fox News in August that the U.S. needs to find a compromise between privacy and safety. A similar “compromise” direction might be forming in the debate over financial and online privacy regulation.
Whether either debate will end in some sort of compromise, or which side will win more, remains an open question. Moreover, these debates might never end.
In the meantime, A16z is likely to continue defending both sides of its privacy and surveillance-related bets. When it comes to Flock investments, A16z seemingly argues that location privacy concerns are misunderstandings that ignore the benefits of fighting crime. In its crypto portfolio, meanwhile, it presents online and financial privacy as a necessity.
Bitcoin.com News has contacted A16z for comment and will update the article should an answer be forthcoming.
