What happened
Shares of Axon Enterprise (AXON 0.65%), maker of Tasers and body cameras for police, rushed as much as 5% higher in Tuesday trading before retracting to close the day up a still-respectable 2.4%. A quartet of press releases appear to have sparked the surge in share price.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
Specifically, Axon announced Tuesday morning that it has done four things:
- Deployed a new artificial intelligence tool called Axon Auto-Transcribe, which will allow police customers to "use artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate the review and transcription of evidence, generating significant time and cost saving benefits for agencies."
- Launched "a new real-time operations platform ... to connect dispatch, patrol officers, field sergeants and tactical officers" that it is calling "Axon Respond."
- Partnered with "actively tethered" unmanned aerial system (UAS) maker Fotokite on its Axon Air program to provide "live-streamed footage within Axon's digital evidence management solution, Axon Evidence."
- Added six new training scenarios to its Axon Virtual Reality Training program.
Now what
Axon didn't provide much in the way of information on how any or all of these initiatives will affect it financially. Still, viewed as a whole, the import of the four announcements is clear: Axon -- which started out as a company inspired by Star Trek to create a non-lethal "Taser" stun gun, and which then expanded into video cameras for police, along with a subscription service called Evidence.com to store the videos generated by said cameras -- is continuing to evolve, offer new products and services, and cross-sell them among its existing customers.
In short, this growth company isn't done growing yet. Investors like the sound of that, a lot.
