Axon (company)

Axon Enterprise, Inc.

Type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: AAXN S&P 600 Component
Founded	1991
Headquarters	Scottsdale, Arizona
Key people	Patrick W. Smith, co-founder, CEO. Thomas P. Smith, co-founder. Doug Klint, president and General Counsel.
Products	Electrical weapons, body worn cameras, digital evidence management
Revenue	$164.5 million USD (2014)
Number of employees	485 (2013)
Website	www.axon.com

Axon (formerly TASER International) is a Scottsdale, Arizona-based company which develops products for the law enforcement market.

Its flagship product and former namesake is Taser, a line of electroshock weapons. The company has since diversified into technology products for law enforcement, including body cameras and digital evidence solutions; as of 2017, body cameras and associated services comprise a quarter of Axon's overall business.

In 1969, NASA researcher Jack Cover began to develop a non-lethal electric weapon to help police officers control suspects, as an alternative to firearms. By 1974, Cover had completed the device, which he named the "Tom Swift Electric Rifle" (TSER), referencing the novel Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle. To make it easier to pronounce as a word, Cover later added an "A" to the acronym to form "TASER". The Taser Public Defender used gunpowder as its propellant, which led the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to classify it as a firearm in 1976. This limited sales and Cover's company, Taser Systems Inc., collapsed.

In 1991, Rick and Tom Smith formed AIR TASER, Inc. to, with Cover, design a version of the device that would use compressed nitrogen instead of gunpowder as a propellant. The pursuit began after two of Rick's former high school acquaintances had been murdered in a road rage incident in Scottsdale. During development, the company faced competition from another vendor, Tasertron, whose product had become associated with its alleged ineffectiveness during the police confrontation of Rodney King.

After nearly going bankrupt marketing other products such as an electroshock-based anti-theft system for automobiles known as "Auto Taser", the company, later re-named TASER International, introduced its TASER M26 weapon in 1999. With a $6.8 million deficit in 2001, TASER International took steps to improve sales by offering to pay police officers to train others on how to use their products; this marketing technique helped improve the company's market share, reaching $24.5 million in net sales by 2003, and nearly $68 million in 2004. In May 2001, they filed for an initial public offering and began trading on NASDAQ under the TASR.