A technology firm with a Charlotte presence has raised a massive capital round that it will use to further product development and expand its services into the United Kingdom.
Mark43, founded in 2012 by Scott Crouch, Matthew Polega and Florian Mayr when they were students at Harvard University, is a cloud-based end-to-end system for public safety entities. Its headquarters is based in New York City with branch locations in Charlotte, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., as well as Toronto and Sydney.
The company announced on Monday a $101 million Series E funding round led by The Spruce House Partnership and Tiger Global with participation from The Radcliff Cos., Australia’s 29th Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and former Lord Mayor of Sydney Lucy Turnbull.
Crouch said they'll use the round to optimize the company's expansion, hone its current platform and develop new products.
"We set off to raise funding that would catalyze our global growth," he said. "We’ll be diving deep into continuing to invest in our U.S. business, as well as pushing into the United Kingdom and more deeply in Australia and Canada."
To date, Mark43 has raised $256 million, including a $50 million round last year. Crouch said Covid was somewhat of a turning point for the company.
"Covid made it nearly impossible for us to spend time in person with customers, which is something we love to do," he said. "At the same time, we saw an acceleration of cloud adoption for public safety agencies. The pandemic helped show departments the need to stop maintaining their own servers and get on the cloud."
In addition to the capital raise, Crouch said Mark43 recently inked a deal with the New South Wales Police Force in Australia to completely overhaul its system.
"It's a phenomenal entry point to the international market, to have our platform going out to the third-largest English-speaking police force in the world," he said. "We'll be replacing their end-to-end system with our platform, launching everything from 911 dispatch to police records management to forensics to evidence logging, so the entire state is on a single system."
