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Axon CPTO on How Law Enforcement Uses AI to Save Lives, Not Just Hit Metrics | Jeff Kunins | E303

In this episode of The Product Podcast by Product School, Carlos González de Villaumbrosia sits down with Jeff Kunins, Chief Product Officer and Chief Technology Officer at Axon, the company that created the Taser and the body cameras law…

Jeff KuninsguestCarlos González de Villaumbrosiahost
Jul 8, 202641mWatch on YouTube

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At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Axon’s CPTO on mission-driven AI, hardware, and responsible policing tech

  1. Jeff Kunins explains Axon’s mission-driven focus on “protect life and obsolete the bullet,” including a 10-year goal to reduce US gun-related deaths between police and the public by more than 50%.
  2. He outlines how Axon operates as a hardware-plus-software company, selling Prime-like bundled subscriptions that combine devices, SaaS, and consumables through long, complex government procurement cycles.
  3. He describes Axon’s product/engineering organization as a blend of GM ownership and functional leadership, with InfoSec embedded inside R&D because security is fundamental to connected public-safety devices.
  4. Jeff details how Axon ships and improves connected hardware quickly through OTA updates, flighting/soak testing, and cloud-side releases while managing customer-controlled adoption when required.
  5. He covers Axon’s AI approach—building first-party models for real-time, high-performance needs (like license plate detection) while using foundation LLMs for other applications—and discusses responsible innovation practices including a prior facial recognition moratorium and an external ethics advisory coalition.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Axon orients its product strategy around measurable life-and-death outcomes, not just operational metrics.

Jeff Kunins described a 10-year “moonshot” to reduce gun-related deaths between police and the public in the US by more than 50%, using public records to track the outcome even if Axon can’t isolate its exact contribution.

Axon frames AI deployment as timing-and-context dependent, not a blanket “use it everywhere” decision.

He said Axon was the first tech company to declare a moratorium on using facial recognition because the technology’s value wasn’t worth the bias and risk at the time, then later began careful evaluation of narrow facial-matching use cases with oversight.

Bundling hardware + SaaS into long-term subscriptions is central to Axon’s go-to-market in government-style procurement.

Jeff said the company sells “Prime-like” bundles on long contracts (most commonly around five years) that combine hardware, software, and consumables so agencies get predictable spending and simpler procurement.

Axon optimizes org design for accountability plus functional excellence, rather than a perfectly “clean” structure.

He described an org model mixing GM-style leaders for product lines with functional leaders for hardware, software, and science, and argued that a too-neat org chart is usually a sign the structure is wrong.

Axon treats security as a product-building capability, not a separate compliance function.

Jeff emphasized that security is foundational, which is why Axon places InfoSec inside R&D and has the CISO on his staff to bake security into engineering and the device lifecycle.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

Starting a couple years ago, we want to reduce the number of gun-related deaths between police and the public in the US by more than 50%, uh, in 10 years.

— Jeff Kunins

We were the very first tech company to, say, to declare a moratorium on using facial recognition technology, because at the time we said, "There is no way that the juice is worth the squeeze," right?

— Jeff Kunins

I believe in not building, rebuilding anything that you don't have to, but building exactly what you have to to be differentiated in the market.

— Jeff Kunins

If your org chart fits too perfectly on a PowerPoint slide, it's probably the wrong org structure.

— Jeff Kunins

Because if we all shy away from those issues, then progress never happens.

— Jeff Kunins

Read the available transcript
Mission: protect life and obsolete the bulletTaser origins and evolution to body cameras and cloud evidencePrime-like bundling and long-term contractsB2G procurement complexity and trust-buildingProduct org design: GM lines plus functional leadersSecurity embedded in R&D and OTA update disciplineAI strategy: first-party models vs foundation LLMs, redaction tooling, facial matching moratorium and reevaluation

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SPEAKERS

  • Jeff Kunins

    guest

    Chief Product Officer and Chief Technology Officer at Axon, leading product and technology for public-safety tools such as body cameras, cloud video, and AI-enabled workflows.

  • Carlos González de Villaumbrosia

    host

    CEO at Product School and host of The Product Podcast.

High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.

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