Around Scottsdale, Axon Enterprise has been in the news for more than three years \u2013 with controversy over its plan to build an apartments-hotel-office complex on Hayden Road near the Loop 101.<\/p>\n
The company is in the local news now more than ever, with allegations by three City Council candidates that Axon is funding efforts to block them.<\/p>\n
On a national level, the company founded here by Chaparral High grad Rick Smith is scoring headlines in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere for its financial performance.<\/p>\n
An eyebrow-raising investor also led to national stories.<\/p>\n
According to a June 29 CNBC story, \u201cPresident Donald Trump bought as much as $5 million in shares of Axon Enterprise<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u2014 maker of Tasers, body cameras and policing software \u2014 two weeks before Immigration and Customs Enforcement sought a five-year, $220 million contract that experts told CNBC appeared tailored to the company\u2019s weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n
The White House stressed Trump\u2019s assets are held in a trust managed by his children and the president\u2019s investments are managed by independent third-party firms.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are no conflicts of interest,\u201d spokesperson Anna Kelly told CNBC; she called scrutiny a \u201ctired narrative\u201d pushed by Democrats.<\/p>\n
According to the story, the ICE notice does not name Axon, but\u00a0 \u201ccalls for \u2018conductive-energy weapons\u2019 with specifications and capabilities that procurement reviewers and three policing experts told CNBC appeared to match only Axon products.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe company already supplies the federal government with Tasers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The notice refers to an upgrade to the \u201cT10,\u201d Axon\u2019s \u201cTaser 10\u2033 model, to replace ICE\u2019s older \u201cX26P\/X2 Tasers,\u201d which are also Axon-made, according to the story.<\/p>\n
As the CNBC story underlined, \u201cThere\u2019s no evidence Trump was involved in or had knowledge of the procurement process, that contracting officials knew of his stock purchase or that Axon knew that Trump was a shareholder.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Feb. 10, Axon stock was trading at around $445 per share.<\/p>\n
Over the last year, the Scottsdale company has been on a rollercoaster ride: Axon\u2019s stock price topped $860 per share last August before falling under $350 in April.<\/p>\n
In the spring, Trump\u2019s investment might have seemed like a dud \u2013 but Axon has been on an upward trend since, rocketing to $550 per share June 30 \u2013 the day after the CNBC story.<\/p>\n
Last month, a Yahoo Finance story outlined some of the company\u2019s diversification\/growth efforts:<\/p>\n
\u201cAmong recent developments, Axon’s launch of Axon Vision, Axon Assistant and Axon 911 in April 2026 is especially relevant. These offerings sit at the heart of Axon’s real time intelligence push and could be the primary catalyst for expanding high margin software and services around its hardware footprint.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just over a month ago, Echodyne announced a partnership with Axon Enterprise to integrate its radar into Axon’s public safety drone ecosystem, boosting Axon\u2019s \u201cdrone as first responder\u201d program.<\/p>\n
The Scottsdale Police Department uses Axon Tasers and body cameras but has not purchased Axon drones.<\/p>\n
According to Sgt. Alison Sempsis of the SPD, \u201cAll our drones are DJI except for a couple of SkyHero LOKI interior drones. We bought the LOKIs from Aardvark Tactical years ago, but they’re now owned by Axon, so I guess technically we do have a couple of \u2018Axon\u2019 drones.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did not purchase the drones from Axon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Record revenue<\/strong><\/p>\n Not selling drones to the Scottsdale Police Department hardly hurt Axon\u2019s bottom line.<\/p>\n Axon\u2019s global revenues are on track to top $3 billion.<\/p>\n On May 6, the company reported record quarterly revenue of $807 million, up 34% year-over-year, marking its ninth consecutive quarter of 30%+ growth.<\/p>\n And, according to Simply Wall Street, \u201cAnalysts are assuming Axon Enterprise’s revenue will grow by 28.1% annually over the next three years.\u201d<\/p>\n Axon plans to add hundreds of workers when it builds its new, spaceship-themed office.<\/p>\n Axon recently told shareholders it plans to start building its Scottsdale \u201cinternational campus\u201d by the end of 2026.<\/p>\n Asked for a comment on this story, Josh Isner, Axon\u2019s president, responded, \u201cWe are unable to comment on our company financials in a blackout, which occurs the last two weeks of every quarter until we announce earnings.\u201d<\/p>\n In a June 28 story profiling Smith, the Wall Street Journal reported, \u201cthe pay package he and his board put together catapulted him to the top of last year\u2019s list of the highest-paid CEOs, with a compensation package valued at $164.4 million.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c… At the end of 2025, Axon estimated the shares underlying the full award could be worth nearly $386 million.\u201d<\/p>\n And, according to the WSJ profile, \u201cSmith, 56, is pressing forward with a new wave of AI tools that he says will revolutionize modern policing, including one that drafts police reports from body-camera audio and another that can answer policy questions mid-arrest.<\/p>\n \u201cAxon\u2019s revenue from AI products is up more than 700% from last year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Around Scottsdale, Axon Enterprise has been in the news for more than three years \u2013 with controversy over…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":918278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,69258,1587,69,189881,1589,183906,7600,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5223],"class_list":["post-918277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-phoenix","tag-america","tag-arizona","tag-axon-enterprise","tag-az","tag-donald-trump","tag-josh-isner","tag-phoenix","tag-rick-smith","tag-scottsdale","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-white-house"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116877931728340641","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=918277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/918278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}