Peregrine is an AI company dedicated to leveraging technology to enhance public safety and community well-being in cities, counties, and states, emphatically rejecting the concept of a surveillance state. Its core mission is to make cities "awesome" by ensuring both objective safety and a subjective feeling of security, believing this stability unlocks immense possibilities.
The founders, Nick and Ben, bring formative experiences to this mission. Nick's background includes running Palantir's SOCOM unit, where he learned "forward deployed engineering" (FDE) – deeply owning a customer's problem, rapidly achieving outcomes, and prioritizing the customer's success. He notes Silicon Valley often misinterprets FDE, lacking empathy for complex institutional contexts and exhibiting ego. Ben's work in humanitarian aid with the UN Refugee Agency and Demagi, building last-mile healthcare solutions in Africa and India, highlighted how data problems underpin societal challenges, inspiring his focus on technology's impact.
Their journey began with the goal of deconstructing how to work with American cities. After numerous rejections, they gained access to the San Pablo Police Department in February 2018 by offering to learn from Commander Brian Bubar, a respected figure in public safety. This emphasis on listening and understanding was crucial for building trust.
Launching amidst the "defund the police" movement and social unrest, Peregrine navigated a polarized environment. Nick describes holding "two truths" – friends protesting police while his team worked with law enforcement. This period solidified their commitment to questioning assumptions and delivering apolitical solutions for often "misunderstood" institutions, even when it meant engineers were reluctant to join their efforts.
Peregrine's business model starkly contrasts with data collection companies like Flock or Axon. Instead of gathering more data, Peregrine focuses on integrating and utilizing disparate information that customers *already own*. They provide a secure, governed solution atop existing systems to improve precision and accuracy. Emphasizing data governance, permission controls, and sovereignty, Peregrine maintains that data belongs to the customer and community, not the company, aiming to decentralize control and prevent a "central panopticon."
Their applications demonstrate this approach's power. In Florida, AI helped a county link specific three-day weather patterns to rip currents, informing water rescue efforts. For synagogue threats, AI's semantic search identified antisemitic patterns missed by keyword searches. Their "cold case agent" processes hundreds of gigabytes of diverse data (video, audio, PDFs) to glean insights, such as identifying a suspect's location from scattered cell records, leading to an exoneration in a Wisconsin case.
Internally, AI significantly accelerates software development, with agents writing about 90% of Python notebooks for data integration. FDEs act as "innovation labs," creating unique, customer-specific tools like hurricane simulators or fire department impact estimators, often rapidly. This "dark cave" approach empowers individual contributors, fostering innovation at the organizational fringes and providing vital feedback for product development.
Addressing moral complexities like facial recognition, Peregrine asserts it's not their role to impose technological decisions. Instead, they inform customers about context, legal considerations, and community preferences, allowing each city to make its own informed choice – most currently opting against facial recognition.
Scaling their deep customer engagement, traditionally seen as unscalable, was achieved by building a vertically integrated, first-class technology stack. This allows them to offer tailored, sophisticated solutions at a price point (under a million dollars annually) affordable to state, county, and city entities, reaching those previously underserved.
Peregrine envisions becoming an institutional memory layer for 10,000 cities in the future, empowering them to manage their data while preserving their unique identities. This long-term vision is underpinned by unwavering integrity, a strong moral compass, and a commitment to stewardship, ensuring technology improves lives and communities without exerting undue power.