Axon Enterprise CEO on growth, the incoming administration, and AI capabilities

Shares of Axon Enterprise, which makes tasers, body cameras and has made some investments in drones, hitting an all-time high today. The stock has soared since the election as Wall Street expects the company to benefit from a second Trump presidency. It's the fifth best S&P 500 performer this year. Joining me now is Axon CEO and founder Rick Smith. Rick, it's great to have you back on the show. Welcome. Thanks. Awesome to be here, Morgan. So a lot to get to, but the first thing I want to get to is the fact that it does seem like, looking to 2025, a new administration coming into the helm, Axon is in a great potential position. You do make body cams, you make tasers, you have this AI-powered software that can help write police reports to then be reviewed. You've been making these investments into drones, so I would call you maybe an emerging defense tech player on that front, too. What are you anticipating from a Trump administration? What does that mean for policies when we do think about things like refunding the police and securing the border and more focus on safety? So we certainly think some of those additional funds will be helpful for the business. But one thing we've learned long term is if we focus on building long-term value, our business is pretty sustainable regardless of what's happening politically. And as you know, we've grown from the company just made tasers to now the world leader in body cameras, in-car cameras, extensive use of drones and counter drone. We bought the world leader in counter drone. And so if you think about that as an information network, our ability to apply artificial intelligence on top of all these sensor nodes is just creating incredible opportunities for us to solve important value, solve important problems. And with that comes a ton of value. And I do it against the AI-specific piece of this. But first, drones have been a big talking point this week. You had Elon Musk take to X to show video of drone footage and basically smack talk the F-35, which is made by Lockheed Martin. But sort of speaking to how drone technology is so key to the future, as you mentioned, you bought dDrone, you partnered with Skydio, which is the biggest manufacturer of drones here in the U.S. How big, whether it's domestically or internationally, how big is that opportunity to stand up and deploy these drone and counter drone technologies right now? It's an enormous opportunity. I think counter drone, given what's happening in Ukraine and what we're seeing in the Middle East, the ability to track drones and to be able to interdict them is going to be key for public safety around the world, not just military. We've got to be able to protect our cities and our stadiums. And we acquired dDrone, the world leader in that space. We also acquired a company called Sky Hero, that's one of the leading companies in indoor tactical drones. So we're betting big on drones and robotics to go do the dangerous sort of jobs where it's not safe to send people in. And as I mentioned, you are something of a stealth AI play, and that is part of what's powered your stock this year. So how are you deploying that? What are you seeing in terms of application possibilities? And how much is that powering the revenue growth that we are seeing at the company? So body cameras started a few years ago, something that would record a police incident, and you might use it tomorrow or the next day to go back and review what happened. But now our connected cameras are connected all the time. So we have eyes and ears on the chest of every officer connected to the most powerful cloud software available in the world. And we're able to apply artificial intelligence. So basically, we've become the artificial intelligence node on every police officer's chest. And we've started with just our first capability, which is to help them write their police reports. And that alone is cutting about a quarter of their shift from bureaucratic tasks so they can be out doing more police work. And that's just the first of about 10 major AI services we'll launch over the next year. And so, of course, it is Black Friday. We are talking about retail, state of the consumer, etc. What I find particularly interesting as I look at my notes here is the fact that you do see this business opportunity to provide protection and increase safety in the private sector as well among different industries, including retail. Walk me through that. Yeah. So there's about 800,000 police officers in the United States, and there's over 2 million private security people. And so if you think about every enterprise has got to think about the safety of their patrons, and they need to be able to coordinate with their local police department. And because we've created this network of cloud software and sensors that connects people and police officers to their agency, we can now connect, you know, retailers, casinos, health care organizations, anywhere where people are gathering and they want to be safe. We can now help their private security people collaborate and coordinate with police to make sure everybody's safe on big days like Black Friday. Rick Smith of Axon. Great to have you on. Thanks for joining me. Thank you.