A New Zealand company quietly runs the retail crime software inside a huge number of the world’s supermarkets and stores. Almost nobody has heard of it. The company is Auror, founded in Auckland by Phil Thomson, James Corbett and Tom Batterbury.
How it actually works
After the reel went up, Auror’s comms team reached out to clarify, so here is the accurate version. It is not automated surveillance. Nothing tracks people as they walk in. Staff log a crime after it happens, and the platform pulls the serious repeat offenders out of those reports.
The facial recognition side, called Subject Recognition, is a separate opt-in product with its own governance controls. Auror says it is not a camera operator or hardware provider, and it bans retailers from logging things like race, religion or political views.
The scale
Auror is now used in more than 85,000 stores, with reported customers including Woolworths and Coles here. It also works with thousands of law enforcement agencies across its markets.
Auror’s argument is that a small group of repeat offenders drives most retail crime, and those people are more likely to be violent. The point is surfacing that group, not chasing petty theft.
The money
Auror raised NZ$82M in a Series C in late 2024, led by Axon, Reinventure and W23 Global. 1News reports it is now valued at more than $500M, with annual revenue up 60% in a year. New Zealand is now only about 10% of revenue.
My read
This is one of the most successful Kiwi software exports and it barely gets talked about. The privacy questions are real and fair to ask, which is why the detail on how it works matters. But a company built in Auckland selling into retailers across multiple countries is exactly the kind of quiet, global business ANZ is good at.