Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Thank you so much for joining us for Evolv Technology Investor Day 2026. My name is Brian Norris. I'm the Senior Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations for the company. We are thrilled to have you here. The folks here in the room, as well as the many folks that are joining us online today. Thanks for joining us as we take a deeper look into our business. Very briefly on my background, I've been with the company for five years now. I lead the FP&A, Treasury, BI, and IR functions for the company. I have about 30 years of experience working for category-leading technology companies, including several hardware-enabled businesses, with recurring revenue models. You're going to hear a lot about that today. In just a minute, I'm going to go through some safe harbor statement and the use of non-GAAP measures.
It's standard, it's important. I'm going to review today's agenda, briefly highlight the speakers of the day, have a few housekeeping items to review with you. I know this is familiar territory for you. Please bear with me. Today's presentation is going to include forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Those statements reflect our current views as of today and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those that we talk about today. For a discussion of those risks and uncertainties, we'd encourage investors to take a look at our SEC filings, including our Form 10-K for the year 2025, as well as our 10-Q for the first quarter of 2026.
The forward-looking statements that we make today are current as of June 9th, 2026. We specifically disclaim any obligation to update those. We're also going to be referring to non-GAAP financial measures today. You're going to easily recognize those by terms such as adjusted gross profit, adjusted gross margin, adjusted operating expenses, adjusted operating income, adjusted EBITDA. These are non-GAAP measures. They're not prepared in accordance with GAAP. They shouldn't be considered in isolation of, or as a substitute for non-GAAP, or excuse me, of GAAP measures. I'll let you know that there is a reconciliation of all non-GAAP measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measure in the end of today's presentation. Of course, it's also included in every earnings release the company publishes, including the one that we issued on May 12th, 2026, covering our Q1 results.
We're also going to be reviewing certain operating metrics like annual recurring revenue or ARR and RPO or remaining performance obligation, which again, we believe are useful for investors to track the progress of our company. I'd caution you that any of the metrics, any of those definitions, could be different than other terms, similar terms that are used by other companies. Please bear that. Let me take a moment just to anchor you on a few of the key messages that we're building on today. First, we believe we're building the leader in advanced screening. Second, we believe we have a highly differentiated business model and product portfolio that combines proprietary hardware, software, AI, and real-world data, which together we believe creates durable, high-margin recurring revenue.
Third, we operate in a very large and under-penetrated market with meaningful growth opportunities, we believe, in the verticals and the geographies that we compete in. Fourth, we're focused on creating customers for life. That's from lead development to customer acquisition, to deployment, to expansion and renewal. We believe that the value of that compounds over time. Finally, we believe we have a business model designed to deliver sustained long-term profitable growth. I'm not going to go through every one of the speakers. They're all actually listed in the booklet in front of you, so you have a very good sense of the executive leadership team who will be here presenting today. We're thrilled to have them with us, obviously. Very briefly, let me walk you through how the next few hours are going to flow.
We're going to be here until about 12:00 with a short break. In just a minute, John Kedzierski, our President and CEO, is going to open things up with a deep review of the company's growth strategy and market opportunity. Owais and Sean will then lead us through a discussion about how our innovation strategy supports the global corporate growth strategy. Next, Robert and Alex are going to walk us through the market opportunity and how we believe we're best organized to accelerate market adoption. We're then going to take a short break from 10:35-10:45. That's a great opportunity for you to go across the hall, get a little bit or outside, get some coffee, or maybe spin by the demo room. We're not going to have a lot of room for demos at that point. Hopefully, you saw them just a few minutes ago.
When we come back, Jill Lemond is going to come on stage and she's going to put the focus on spotlight education, and she's going to take us into that market opportunity, which of course is the largest single market for the company. We're then going to be joined by one of our customers, Regina Lombardo, from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is going to be on stage with Anil Chitkara for a virtual fireside chat. We're going to have Chris Kutsor, our CFO, who's going to walk us through our business model and our financial update. Just a couple of housekeeping things. Number one, there's wireless access into everybody in the room. There should be a tag somewhere in front of you, so you can get on the internet.
There's also power at every desktop, so you have an opportunity to charge all the electronics that you brought today. As I mentioned, there's a demo room right across the way. We'll have time very briefly at the break, but moreover, I encourage you to go over there at lunchtime, the lunch hour, 12:00. We're going to have demos of both Express and eXpedite available to you. There are restrooms directly across the hall if you need a break. I'll also tell you that, and I'll be mindful of you that this event is being webcast live for all people that can't be with us. In terms of Q&A, we have a lot to cover. We're not going to have Q&A sessions with every presentation. There will be opportunities at the break and at lunch to ask some questions of the executive team.
All presentation materials will be available online as well. Lunch. Last one, and it's important. You all should have a name tag. In that name tag is a ticket for lunch, and we have some of Waltham's finest that we're going to be having right outside here at 12 o'clock, and you'll need that ticket. Okay? Again, welcome to Evolv Technologies Investor Day 2026. We're thrilled to have you with us.
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What we've built is more than a product. It's a new category. Advanced Weapons Detection. Effective screening can now exist beyond airports and courthouses into everyday places. Evolv delivers AI-powered systems that detect real threats in real environments in real time.
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We continue to innovate, refining form, fit, and function with the goal of making security fade into the background. Our platform combines purpose-built hardware, software, and differentiated AI models. Our technology leadership reflects over a decade of focused investment, bringing together multidisciplinary expertise across the mechanical engineering, hardware, software, and deep capabilities in AI and machine learning. Our solutions screen millions of people every day, and our customers are identifying, on average, over 500 firearms daily. We've gone from creating a new category to building what we believe can become the standard in security. Raising a simple question: Are you screened by Evolv? 60 years ago, there were no seatbelt mandates, no sprinkler systems, no smoke detector requirements. Today, they are often expected, we believe we're beginning to see a similar shift in security.
The total addressable market spans hundreds of thousands of venues, we expect it to grow.
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This next decade is focused on scaling growth with a mission that matters, making the world a safer place for people to live, work, learn, and play.
Please welcome John Kedzierski, President and Chief Executive Officer.
Thank you for joining us here at our headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts, for Evolv Investor Day 2026. My name is John Kedzierski. I'm the President, Chief Executive Officer, and a member of the Board of Directors of Evolv. I've been CEO for approximately 18 months. Prior to that, I had a 23-year career at Motorola Solutions, where I held a variety of executive roles. Most recently, I had the privilege of leading building Motorola Solutions’ physical security business, which is video cameras and access control systems. I've spent pretty much my entire career either in public safety or security. I'm a computer engineer by background, and technology is always near and dear and just a personal interest of mine. That lines up extremely well with Evolv. Evolv has a very clear mission, and we're going to elaborate on what that means for us, our investors, and our customers today.
We're addressing an immensely difficult problem trying to detect weapons, differentiate them from many everyday benign items, and doing that without changing how we all live. Where is Evolv today? A lot has changed in the last 18 months. We have over 1,300 customers around the world, but predominantly here in the U.S. They have about 9,000 units of ours. Every one of those units generate a subscription, and that recurring revenue base is a key foundation into our growth, the visibility we have into future revenues, and you're going to hear a lot about how we continue to leverage that today. Those subscriptions, at the end of Q1, represented over $127 million of annual recurring revenue. Those subscriptions are long-term. Our most typical arrangement is a four-year contract.
The total remaining performance obligation, that is revenue that is contracted but we have not yet delivered or recognized, was almost $300 million. Once again, putting an exclamation point on the visibility we have into what the future looks like for us financially. We're here to make the world a safer place, and we'll talk about the origin of the company really briefly. This mission to make the world safer for us to live, to work, to learn, to play, is not just lip service. It's in the very DNA of the company. It's why we're able to draw great talent into the organization, really out-hitting our weight. It drives all the decisions that we make. I'll share a quick story on that, of what that personally means for me. My daughter just graduated high school.
She attended a public school in the city of Chicago, a very, very large one. Over 4,000 kids attend there. They use legacy screening technology. Walk-through metal detectors, legacy X-ray with somebody staring at an image as they go by. Because there's so many students there, they can't screen every day. When they do screen, they can't screen all the kids. They approximately pick out one out of 10, at least that was her estimate when she told me the story. Even when they do that, with all the best intentions, they can't screen everybody. They get this line outside the door. Why is this line a problem? It's a soft target. It stretches out to a very large intersection that's very close by. It takes 30 minutes to get through that line. Now somebody doesn't need a weapon to create a tragedy.
They just need to yank the wheel on the steering wheel and something horrible happens that day. It's a great example of what we'll talk about later in terms of the protection paradox and how all the best intentions can create a challenge. That mission is what we're here around, to enable that compromise of security and not having all the inconvenience and the other challenges. It's in the very lifeblood of the company and how we were founded. We were founded by Anil Chitkara and Mike Ellenbogen, who are still with the company today. Anil, our Chief Growth Officer, and Mike is on our board of directors. The company was founded in 2013 in the shadows of the Boston Marathon bombing. Anil knew somebody who was personally impacted at that event.
They set about a challenge of how do we use technology to try to prevent this kind of situation happening again? How do you screen all of these masses of people, whether they're going into an enclosed venue or an open area such as this? They created a company around this very goal and building the purpose that we have. What have we done? We've created a new category. What do I mean by a new category? When we approach customers, very often we are replacing nothing at all. Remind yourself about how you got here today. Many of you flew. Think about that air travel experience and the security experience that you have. Think back to how much space did that lane of security, the metal detector and the bag scanner next to it, occupy? Was it 30 linear ft? 40, 50?
How many people operated that? How long did you wait in line? Did you get selected for a secondary screening, and what was that experience like? Now imagine, can you take what I just described, what you went through, and put it into the lobby of my daughter's school? Can you put it into the entrance of an emergency room? Can you stick it in the entrance of this building, our headquarters, where we're having this meeting? You can quickly come to a conclusion that that practically will be very difficult to go do. As another example of what I mean by a new category, think about when Steve Jobs held up his hand and showed the world an iPhone. Did he have to convince you that a cellular phone was a good thing to have? No. BlackBerry, Nokia, Motorola had already all done that.
Steve showed you a much better phone. When we're meeting with clients, we're often showing them something they could not do before with the technology that was available, there are few greenfield opportunities in markets like that. We created the market that we're actually going after with that technology, we think that's a really exciting not only purpose, but investable opportunity, because there's few clear fields like that ahead for many companies. Where's the goal? We believe that ultimately, most buildings that prohibit weapons will screen with technology like ours. As we continue to iterate on the efficacy of our product, that's all about alert rate and driving that as low as possible.
As we iterate on form factors and shapes to make sure that we cover this entire 700,000 entry opportunity, I think, just like you see sprinkler systems or airbags in cars or rearview cameras or fire alarms, these types of technologies will become standardized. That's the future that we're building to. We already make an impact every day. 500 firearms daily, seven days a week, 365 days a year. This is our customers going on the app that they have in front of our system, tagging a real weapon found. We get the news articles where our customers tell the world about how our technology is helping protect their students, their patients, their employees, and the anecdotes that we hear directly from our clients. What we did is use technology to make the protection paradox better.
We could have done a hand search of every single person that came into this facility and created a pretty high level of assurance that there's no weapon inside this room. That isn't very practical. It isn't very convenient. It requires that everybody changes how they live. When people are going into a house of worship or a museum or their office, they don't want it to feel like they're going to the airport, or they're going into a jail, or they're visiting a courthouse. Evolv created technology to try to make this compromise not the same level of compromise that it has always historically been. Because of our deployment in sports and entertainment, there's a good chance you've experienced what Evolv looks like. The crowd on the left-hand side of this slide, we also remember that.
A lot of people waiting in a line, a very clear line, and not as many people behind it. The experience that now Evolv has, thanks to all the partnerships with the sports teams that we've been privileged to serve, you can wait at that tailgate longer. You don't stress, "Am I going to miss kickoff?" The stadium operator knows that they've put themselves in the best position to get people from the street to the seat, so they can experience all the wonderful amenities and concessions that they have. We did this by using sensors and AI, edge compute, to be able to differentiate a phone from a firearm. We didn't just stop there. We have a mission to make things safe, and just differentiating that phone from that firearm is step 1.
The red light that goes off on the system doesn't stop the weapon from coming inside. It's all on the guard and that security operator. We also focused on how do we use technology to make that security operator better? The security guard industry turns over as much as 3x per year. We use video cameras. We continue to iterate on those algorithms to be able to locate the threat on the person so that we can provide the best information that we can to that security guard, to that gym teacher that might be showing up early to man security systems that day. That conversation isn't, "Let me wand your entire body.
Hold your arms out," but it's, "What's in your right hip pocket?" We truly believe that makes the security outcome safer because you're directing that attention, and if somebody's wanding a person top to bottom all day long, it's difficult to hold your attention. We also made the solutions cloud connected so that the security screening could be a source of intelligence for your operations teams, your facilities teams. How many people came in door one versus door two? What was their average throughput, so I can compare how efficient my teams are? How many people stopped for an alert or a secondary screening? How many real threats, because we find 500 every day, did they find on those individuals? Being able to manage the systems remotely. Software upgrades are pushed into the field.
Being able for us to be able to do remote diagnostics for our customers so we can keep uptime as high as possible. Giving the ability for our customers to share these alerts, whether it's a mobile app and an image of somebody that might have been caught with a threat, or being able to change the algorithms, which we call sensitivity settings, on the fly based on whatever risk intelligence is being provided. Evolv's first deployments when the company went public were predominantly in sports and entertainment venues. It was also during COVID, and a lot of facilities were looking for ways to reopen, keep security, but do screening in a much more touchless and less intimate way. Evolv had the opportunity to deploy in many of these iconic locations. The security industry is event-driven.
Just like the Boston Marathon bombing triggered Anil and Mike to build a company of how to use technology to enable screening in a totally different way, the pandemic of school shootings continued. That headline is from Uvalde, and Evolv got pulled into, by customers, into schools, into the education market, deploying Express, and now our single largest vertical that we are in. Over 70% of workplace violence incidents occur in the healthcare industry, in hospitals, and inside ERs. Now Evolv is in ERs around the country, doing its best to protect the patients and the workers that operate there. About a year ago, we saw a tragic event with a person with a long rifle breaking into a building in midtown Manhattan, and Evolv is now in industrial workplaces. Every one of these opportunities, they're different. Customer requirements are slightly different.
How they think about their operations is different. The aesthetics that they want for the product is different. It's always an opportunity to learn. There's one thing that's common on the requirements that they have, and that is the alert rate. This chart is how we score ourselves internally when we're developing algorithms, evaluating new sensing technologies. It is the rate of false alarms, false positives, to true positives. How often is it real gun versus a false alarm? Our goal is to get to that green dot. Perfect. You always detect the threat, and you never false alarm. That's most likely physically impossible. Nothing's perfect, and we never attest to being so. That's where we work, and we spend an enormous amount of effort, and you're going to hear about that today, to get as close as that goal. Why is that important?
Remember, we're a brand-new category. We're often replacing nothing. It's a green field in front of us. That also means there's nobody to man the door when the system's there. The lower the alert rate is, it's directly correlated to how much staff you have to have to deal with the secondary screening, because when the system goes off, whether it's Express on your person or eXpedite for your bag, somebody has to check that bag. How we think about it, that alert rate and how low you can get it's analogous to what we saw inside electric cars, at least what I believe. If you look at the first modern electric cars, the ones that are available today or look similar to them, they first came on the market 10, 15 years ago. Who bought them? It was tech nerds like me.
I'm an early adopter. I like technology, self-driving, all those things, even the first basic versions. I have one. What did it take for everybody else to buy one? I believe it was range. When you got rid of the anxiety that I'm going to run out of juice before I get home, and the car started having 300, 400 mi of range per charge, it crossed the chasm for everybody to buy one. That's how we think about alert rate. As we got into these new verticals, we learned. We learned about challenges that, through the laws of physics, affect everybody inside the industry. You can walk through Express with all your belongings. I'm going to keep picking on my daughter. Her backpack has a school-issued Chromebook, and often those Chromebooks are ruggedized.
They have extra metal in them because you don't want the screen to crack, because it'll make it less flexible and all that. She doesn't take notes on a pen and paper. She does it on an iPad that's in that backpack. You have to have the really cool Stanley water bottle in there. Another big chunk of metal. Right? There's no chance that you can miss a post on Instagram, a Snap, so you got to have charging bricks, cables, and potentially a spare battery in that bag, too. That is a whole lot of metal, a whole lot of electronics, and we're looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack to find a weapon or a gun inside that bag. We take safety and our mission very serious. If we're not sure, we're going to alert.
The result, if you walk through with all that stuff, that alert rate that might be single digits or low double digits in a stadium. 90%+ of people are clearing. That might be 75% clear rate, and you're stopping 25% of the people. We worked on this. We worked on it with our customers, and there was a simple solution that you see here that is done by a lot of our clients, which is take the laptop out of the bag. Pretty simple. You see people getting in really quick and that alert rate and that clear rate goes up. We're a tech company. We created this category, and we wanted to do better than this, and we did. We launched Evolv eXpedite about a year ago now.
The first commercially accepted units went out in January or so of last year, Q1. It completely changed the experience. We applied the same thinking to creating eXpedite that we did to Express. Use AI to make discrimination decisions between threat and benign object. You notice on eXpedite, there's no screen. There's no place to review an image. That's important for more things than speed and convenience. To operate a traditional X-ray machine, you need a trained X-ray operator, because an X-ray image doesn't look like your regular image, and we're back to that staffing challenge. By using AI, we eliminated having to have a trained person, like the equivalent of the radiologist at your doctor's office. AI can also make decisions, called inference, really fast. How fast? Fast enough that the belt does not stop unless a threat is detected.
It's doing the inference in real time at belt speed. Continue to focus on staff. Show the alerts from eXpedite on the same place you show them for Express to try to minimize staff burden, and that enables an experience like this. People are walking into a facility, they're dropping their bag. Oh, look at that. You notice they never have to stop unless a threat is detected. It's continuous. You don't break stride. We believe there's nothing else like this on the marketplace that we're aware of that offers this kind of throughput, this kind of clear rate, meaning stopping the minimum number of people. We will continuously work on how we innovate new products, form factors, algorithms to make this experience better and better, driving it to be as close to invisible as we can.
When I got here 18 months ago, there were some very well-publicized challenges around Evolv. We worked incredibly hard to fix those. I learned a lot about the culture of this company during that process. When we filed our restated financials in the end of April of 2025, it was 10 quarters of financials that we filed. The equivalent of 10-Qs over 2.5 years. three Ks. Think about how long a public company typically takes to file after the end of a quarter, and imagine that you did that 10x . This team completed that in five months. You don't do that unless you care. You don't do that unless you're willing to sacrifice times on the weekends, times with your family, vacations, being willing to do a check-in seven days a week, because that's what we did.
I underestimated what kind of a tailwind it is to an organization to have a purpose and to have a mission. On top of building a foundation for the company for the future, making sure we have the right balance sheet, proving to our investors, to our customers, that we can make positive adjusted EBITDA, that we can generate cash last year, we focused on our team and updated our values to double down on that core strength of high performance and innovation driven by the tailwind of a mission that matters and that you can get behind. We updated the leadership team as well. New CEO, new CFO, new Chief Revenue Officer, new Chief Marketing Officer, new Chief Product Officer, new General Counsel, new Head of Supply Chain.
People who have been there, done that, seen what good looks like with the right experiences and background to augment a Chief of Engineering that built this product from the ground up and brought it into this market, to augment our Head of HR, Liza, who created and fostered that culture inside the company that we talked about. We have the right team to take this company forward. What do we think forward looks like? 18 months in, we believe we can triple this company, triple its revenue, and take it to $500+ million, operating at a Rule of 50 in five years. We say Rule of 50, you can do the math, that equates in approximately a 25% compound annual growth rate and a 25+% EBITDA margin.
If we see the opportunities to grow faster, we think we'll be confidently in Rule of 50, but we might invest more to drive the growth rate higher. In the first few years, that growth rate might not be exactly there as we're building for the future and expanding our sales team and our products. How do we get there? We're going to get there by taking our story to every customer that's a potential good fit. Making sure that we have the right sales and marketing coverage for that total available market to execute on that vision that most buildings that prohibit weapons will screen for weapons with a technology like ours. That's here and around the world.
We're going to extend the product portfolio, just like we proved to ourselves with the Evolv eXpedite product, that we can innovate, find new ways to solve this incredibly hard problem, and as long as we're driving alert rate down, creating great experience for students, for patients, for visitors, for fans, that we can bring new products to market. We have one goal in that R&D team. I'm sorry, 2. Get alert rate as close to zero as possible. Get to that green dot on the chart and make sure that we have the right product, shape, appearance, fit, and price for every potential customer in this 700,000 entryway TAM. The core fundamentals of our business and the key drivers are pretty simple. Add units, keep that customer happy so they stay, continue to add units, whether it's adding new customers or expanding them.
If we do that, we will generate what we believe are outsized returns long into the future. That's the brilliance of a subscription-based ARR business. Our contracts are four years long. We haven't had a lot of history and statistics to share, especially that are meaningful and significant around renewals. Last year, we had about 400 units, not customers, units that came up for renewal. We ended last year with 8,000 units. 400 is not very significant. We did learn, and we learned enough to give ourselves the confidence that this is going to be a business that has a net revenue retention that is over 100%, and over 100% in a healthy way. Why do we believe that? 50%, approximately, of our new unit bookings come from existing customers that are expanding their fleet.
They're adding entryways with Express, now they're adding new products as we're upselling them to Expedite. Expedite's been available for approximately one year. In that one year of time, now 6% of all our customers have the product. In Q1, 17% of our new logos purchased Expedite. We really like that trend, I want to show you what that looks like in a customer example. Bank of America, they deployed Express Gen 1 back in 2021, so four years ago. They deployed 17 systems across their facility. During the course of their original contract, their four-year contract, they screened 8.5 million people with those 17 systems, then it came time to renew. They didn't just renew. They upgraded to our latest version of Express Gen 2.
That incorporated many learnings over those four years of how to make the customer ownership experience better and delivered a noticeable improvement in alert rate. They didn't just upgrade to Gen 2. They added five units, now they have 22 from 17 to 22 Express. They didn't stop there. They added four Expedite units as well, now they're screening back of house and a lot of their office space. This is the formula for how we continue to grow, how we triple the business at Rule of 50 as we continue to land, expand, and upsell customers over and over and over again. We created a new category, there is a pattern that you can see sometimes when you create a new technology that makes safety and security better. That is it becomes a standard.
I talked about the sprinkler systems, airbags, rearview cameras, fire alarms, you could go on and on. What about an example that's closer to home? 16 years ago, 2010, body cameras were pretty rare. Today, they're pretty ubiquitous on law enforcement officers, not just here in the U.S., but around the world, with federal agencies as well. What happened? Products out there, security is event-driven. An event occurred, Ferguson, Missouri. A year later, the President of the U.S. provided grant funding for police departments to deploy body cams. That same year, state of South Carolina became the first state to mandate body cams on police officers that interact with the public. Today, over 34 states have some sort of mandate requiring law enforcement to have body cams. What's been happening in our space?
The state of California passed a law requiring certain hospitals to have advanced weapon screening. The state of Georgia had a bill pass their House, it has not yet passed their Senate, that would require every school in Georgia to screen for weapons. As a parent of three, I absolutely fervently believe every school should screen for weapons. Technology to do that and do it in a practical way, not the airport, jail, courthouse way, exists, and that should happen. We were not involved in any way in California and Georgia, there are several other states now that have discussions in their legislatures or action around doing similar things without our involvement in any way.
We think it's time for us to get involved, to make sure that our voice is heard as we can educate lawmakers, decision-makers, the market on the efficacy of these technologies, especially with innovations like eXpedite. We're going to invest to make sure that our story is well understood with those that make these decisions. Security is not just a concern here in the U.S., whether it's Massachusetts, where we're at, or the other coast of California. It's a global concern. Now almost every day you open up an article and you read about something that's occurring. You have geopolitical tensions around the world that are probably as acute as any point in the 47 years that I've been on the planet.
With what's happening in the Middle East, a continued unresolved situation in Ukraine, geopolitical tensions inside Southeast Asia, the constant threat of violence, whether that's a shooting at a well-known tourist site in Mexico or bladed weapon attacks inside the U.K. There is a need. We have technology that we believe can help. We're going to be much more deliberate in our international investments. In 2025, less than 4% of our revenue came from outside the U.S. It's a big planet. There's many places to go. Deliberate means making the investments in the product portfolio because we have hardware that bases our subscription to get it into the countries where we see the right opportunity and making sure we have the sales and service coverage in those places to do that successfully in the way Evolv expects our customers to be treated.
We occupy a really interesting piece of real estate. We have a hardware platform with edge compute, sensors, AI, cloud connectivity at the entryway of a building where almost everybody who walks into the building goes through it. There's a lot of interesting things that happen around that point of real estate, whether that's ticketing or credentialing or access control or visitor management, or it's the video that's most often viewed, at least in the security operation centers that I've been to, around the entrances. There's a lot of opportunities that we see in front of us, whether they are to make the experience for the person coming in, the student, the fan, the patient, the visitor, the teacher, the employee, better.
To continue to try to improve security outcomes by moving more and more before what we do or after, in case something does occur, and how do you put first responders in the best position to resolve it? To drive efficiency in security operations, because for most of our clients, it's not lost on us that security is a cost center, and if you can do things to make them more efficient, that's attractive. Across these opportunities, we'll look at a decision criteria of do we partner and leverage our open APIs and integration ecosystem? Do we build something organically? If something really makes sense and is a great opportunity, that we make an acquisition to accelerate growing this portfolio.
I want to be clear, the biggest opportunity we see and the highest return on invested capital is to get into those 700,000 entryways to make sure we have the right product, the right sales coverage, the right service, and the right structure to go do so. That's how we get to tripling the business, Rule of 50 in five years. Continue to innovate on lowering alarm rates.
The range of this industry, have the right sales coverage, continue to make sure that we keep customers happy, we land them, renew them, expand them, make sure that we have the right products, and continue to grow our successful introduction of new products, like we did with eXpedite, with new variations of those, so that we have something for all the customers that we think we can help. Drive the story that we have into decision makers, because I believe many facilities like schools should all be required to screen and take the story around the world. As you sit there through the rest of today and listen to the rest of the team, I want you to ask yourself, do you believe in our vision? Do you believe that just like there's sprinkler systems inside this building, one day, buildings that prohibit weapons will all screen?
They will all screen for weapons at the door. If you believe that vision like we do, which company do you think is best positioned to capture that market and the growth and the financial opportunity that it will create? Thank you, and I hope you enjoy the rest of this investor day.
Please welcome Owais Hassan, Chief of Engineering.
R&D labs. I'm Owais Hassan. I'm head of R&D at Evolv. Some brief background about myself. Over 30 years of career in high tech R&D, delivering multiple mission-critical systems, often first of the kind in the industry. I will share the two with you. The internet core switches I built is behind the streaming and multimedia boom. My initial work on Wi-Fi brought internet connectivity to your mobile devices. This is my eighth year at Evolv, and I'm advancing the most complex concealed weapon detection platform. This is the hardest problem I have worked on, and the most meaningful one. I'm going to talk very briefly about what is Evolv identity, our technical moat, but going to spend more time on our products and solution, give you a deeper insight there, and also going to talk about the innovation pipeline ahead. Let's start with a simple question first.
What is Evolv's identity? Let's think about the durable tech companies you know of, like Nvidia, Apple, Exxon. What all of them have in common? They have the deep hardware and software integration. You cannot separate the two. That full stack control is their moat. Evolv has a similar resilient moat, and we are a physical AI company. Our moat is our hardware, our proprietary hardware, our own software, the data we built for the AI model. All these four components are fused together. They all work in tandem, inseparable by design. That full stack is our moat. As John said, we are the category creator in concealed weapon detection technology, physical AI company enabling a future where most public buildings are protected by Evolv. Let me give you some insight about what it takes to build this kind of a company.
Since our inception, roughly about 13 years ago, we have spent $100 million in R&D. This year alone, we are spending over $20 million in R&D, focusing on AI and new form factor development. This is not a fractional investment. Every dollar we spend raises the bar high and widens our moat as we go after 700,000 doorways ahead of us. The hexagon you see on the slide, it's our world-class R&D capabilities, covering the full tech stack. 100 engineers and scientists, led by a domain expert who has been building products zero to one for years. We are solving genuinely hard problems, and hard problems build durable companies. I'm going to talk a little bit more about our products now, give you some insight. Let's start with the basics. This is our people screening product, Express. Okay.
The concealed weapon detection is performed in real-time without disrupting the flow. The people continue to move as they go. There are simple red and green lights on the towers. They provide early intel for guards to manage the flow. You have seen on the video that we have connected tablets at the distance. They are there for threat resolution. You've seen our Red Box technology. The illustration that you see on this slide, the colored waves that you see is to describe how this technology works. This is going to provide a little bit more deeper insight about these technologies. Evolv Express is an active system. What is an active system? It has a transmitter and a receiver. We generate an electromagnetic field between the towers. The colored waves you see within the electromagnetic field is the multiple frequencies we use.
It's not a single frequency system. What it does, it helps with better object discrimination. That colored field that you see between the tower is the scanning zone where people walk through, and it is invisible. Imagine that someone is going through this electromagnetic field carrying a concealed object on them. You carry a phone, keys, and a laptop or a potential weapon. When it happens, it interacts with that field, and it disturbs the field. It generates secondary signals, which are picked up by the sensors in all of these towers. Once they pick up these signals, they're digitized and fed to our machine learning algorithm inside. The ML algorithm is making one decision, threat or no threat.
If it has a high confidence that it is not a threat, then the green light on this tower stays on, and people just continue to flow through the system. If it turns out to be a potential threat, then those green lights immediately turn red, and the system decorates or pinpoints a threat on a person where it finds, and it generates a Red Box alert with a video image, we call it evidence, that goes to the guard who has this tablet at the distance, so they can do a more informed threat resolution, making sure that person is not entering into the venue. All of these decisions are happening in real time, in a quarter of a second, while we're not stopping the flow. People continue to move into the venues.
The operation sounds incredibly simple by design, but there is a lot of complex technology underneath. We have worked extremely hard to even make it work in a controlled lab environment. We have to deal with making it work in a real operating environment, dealing with many different environmental conditions, windy conditions, rain, snow, sleet, Arizona sun loading, even interferences or noise that you see in venues from HVAC equipment, power lines, outdoor fast-moving trains. All of it, every one of them, every single day across our large fleet. We have built not only making the functionality work, but a lot of robustness in our technology to handle all of it and operate successfully in many of these environments. This is how Evolv Express works. I'm going to give you a little bit more insight into our Evolv eXpedite technology. Evolv eXpedite is our bag screening product.
It uses X-ray technology with AI-based threat detection. As John said, AI is reviewing all images in real time and making decisions in real time, and the belts keep flowing until the potential threat is found. One thing I wanted to give you is more insight there. This is a native AI hardware platform. It's not a bolt-on AI that you may see with traditional systems. You know that traditional system uses pseudo-color images. Those are meant for trained operator to look at these images. You may see at the airport where you're waiting for your bag to come out. Those has limited data, are not ideal for AI processing. In Expedite, we use raw dual energy channels to fully extract the full content that needed for reliable AI detection. That's what is called native AI. Full dense content so that you can reliably do AI threat detection.
We were designing a kind of Ferrari of bag screening. Our belt has to run much faster to keep up or match the natural walking speed of Express. That comes with a lot of technical challenges in all different areas, especially in the hardware design, where we have to make sure that the image that we picked up, the clean image, is provided in a consistent and reliable way in all condition for a much more reliable AI processing. A lot of complexities we deal with, it require a lot of creative hardware design for us to overcome those challenges. What we went through is a topic for another day. That's one piece. The form factor that we have also on this product is highly compact, and it's mobile, it's suitable for both indoor and outdoor applications.
One thing I'm going to talk about, as we talked about, it is AI-driven threat detection capability. We build the AI model also from the ground up, and that require also a massive data development effort, the training data that you need for AI model to be effective. The training data from the ground up, synthesis data, ground truth data, field data, all of this has been used to train our AI model, a proprietary AI model, edge inference running on the Expedite GPU. All in all, we build this product from ground up, roughly in about 14 months from the start, zero to one. The combination of the speed, the AI-based threat detection capability that we have, the bag localization that you see on the screen here, and this compact and mobile form factor, we believe this combination is unique to Expedite product.
We talked about that we built Expedite to match the speed of Express. They work great together by design. The result is a high-performing integrated checkpoint solution that you see. One of the innovation that we did outside of hardware, it's the integrated tablet capability that we built in network behind these two product that bring bag alerts and people alert on a same tablet. That really helps in terms of a unified view, create less stress on the guard. Some of the benchmark that you see, a case study, data from five schools, showing high 90s clear rate, unprecedented. This is meant for high throughput environment. We believe that the 2% alert rate that you see for this bundle solution is best in class in the industry. I did talk about the hardware.
Now I'm going to talk about the cloud platform behind our fleet. We have all ground units, Evolv eXpedite and Evolv Express. They all connected through an LTE broadband network, fast and fat pipes. They are all managed through our AWS, hosted on AWS, and our cloud is a fleet management and a data platform. A couple of operations I'm going to point out. All the ground units, Evolv Express and Evolv eXpedite, they all connected to our cloud. They are providing real-time information about what's happening on these units, the alert rates, the visitor counts, and those are all appearing on the Evolv Insights, on a live dashboard that customers can see what is the venue performance there.
If the threats are detected by the ground units, those are also sent, pushed out to the cloud, and it is shared out to the subscribers whenever the threat is detected, and also to our ecosystem partners using OpenAPI. On OpenAPI side, we cover all common protocols to connect with the partner devices. The whole operation is bi-directional. When I say bi-directional, there are fleet management capabilities there that we push software over the air to the ground units. It also provides capability to our partner ecosystem who are connected through OpenAPI. If they have, for example, a brandish gun alert, it also comes through their device, through our network, all the way down to the tablets on the ground. The tablet I talked about showing bag alerts and people alert, it can also have a brandish gun alert on that.
That infrastructure that we built, we can use it for threat intelligence and other things, integrating things. We built this also from the ground up, the cloud platform, end-to-end networking, and DevOps infrastructure, all these pieces. This gives you some insight into our qualification process. This is a glimpse of a weapon arsenal we use to qualify the product. The three different key areas I'm describing here, guns from micro compact to long rifles, bladed weapons like knives, and also improvised devices such as pressure cooker bombs and pipe bombs. This is what gives us and our customer confidence into Evolv product. We do also very rigorous qualification testing. The two areas I'm going to describe, one is the physical testing that we do with real weapons, simulated weapons, internal third-party testing across the weapon categories I talked about.
We also built our own custom test platform that launches suites of functional tests in all areas of functionality, detection, regression, injected alerts, stress testing, performance testing. Two metrics I will share with you. On that platform today, we have 9,000+ test cases that run on our live hardware. Last year alone, we ran a longevity test, launched through that platform, all suites of tests that we support over the catalog of capabilities we support, 27,000 hours of operation, which is roughly about three years of continuous round-the-clock operation on the live hardware. We do this because we are deeply committed to our mission, and we are doing our part ensuring that we provide high quality to our customers. Our customers are not buying a standalone hardware. They have invested into a continually improving platform.
The couple of proof points here, as John talked about, since our journey, we have been working on reducing the alarm rate down. We bring a lot of capabilities there. You see alarm rate reduction across all verticals. We've also brought new capabilities on the software that push down to our ground units, which is Express and Expedite. In 2024, we also brought two new hardware platform. I talked about Expedite and also Gen 2. This is all managed and controlled through our unified Evolv Cloud platform. All together, we are bringing a sustained subscription value year after year. What next in terms of ahead? Our North Star is invisible security, and what it means that the technology disappear in the environment and just simply works. As John said, two focus area to get there.
Number one, continue the journey that we have from the inception into reducing the false alarm rate down. We'll be investing into new sensors, new AI, advanced AI. A lot of work investment from that side. The other thing is leverage the IP we built. I call it core IP, our modular architecture to turn new product faster, multiple segments, multiple form factors, and multiple price points. That's the path to 2031. We're not starting from zero. We have 13 years of R&D and operational experience behind these products. The best is ahead of us. That's my last slide. Thank you.
Please welcome Sean Ma, Vice President, Machine Learning and Sensors.
Morning, everyone. My name is Sean Ma. I'm the VP of AI, Machine Learning and Sensors. I joined Evolv in December 2025. Prior to Evolv, I spent 20+ years developing AI ML algorithms and products from zero to one and from one to N and scale to global markets. Today, I'm excited to introduce our AI ML team, as well as explain how we build AI ML capabilities at Evolv. I'll start talking about our people, which I believe is one of the most important assets of the company, and also the driving force for innovation. Like Owais said, over the past decade, we have built a world-class R&D team with 100+ engineers and scientists, out of which 15 are in the core AI ML. Those are people with PhDs and master's from top universities. They are domain experts with deep knowledge in physics, sensors, AI, and machine learning.
They also have many years' experience building and scaling physical AI products in industry-leading companies. In just last 12 months alone, we have added 10 more new team members into our team. Next, I'm going to introduce our AI flywheel, which is the engine to drive innovation and keep driving Evolv an industry leader in threat detection. The flywheel starts with the top, where the sensors start. Like Owais said, we carefully select sensors that sense threats, and those are sensors like magnetic sensors, X-ray sensors, cameras, and other modalities. Those sensors will be giving us raw sensor signal that contain useful information and also sometimes contain the real-world challenges like interference, noises. We feed those sensor data into our data factory, where we carefully curate, examine, and label, and clean, and make sure the sensor data are becoming a training data with high quality.
The training data is fed into our AI Center of Excellence, where we do a lot of hard work, like hard example mining, feature engineering, solve real-world problems, as well as building AI/ML models. Once those new models are built, we deploy them back into our fleet and working together with our real-time hardware and software and making our sensing smarter. A smarter sensing will drive more customers to use our sensors, and that actually feed back more sensor data to us. This is really hard to build, but we already built it and put in operation and going through multiple iterations. Next, I'm going to introduce our deep moat of proprietary data and experiences. Like John and Owais explained, so far, we have over 9,000 units deployed at over 1,300 customers. Those are real-world deployment and screening 4 million+ visitors every day.
Those are real-world scans that's available for us to use. With permission from our customers, we can use those data to evaluate our AI model, as well as train our AI models. Our data grows fast with daily screening. Our data grows faster with more deployment and more customers. Next, I'm going to explain how we build the AI system and our AI models. It starts with the connected fleets that Owais has mentioned. The fleets will send back data and learnings and feedbacks into our centralized AI learning system, where we build the models, and also the model is built to improve over time. When the model is validated to improve and be better than the last one, we will deploy those models back into our fleet, and those will make our fleet smarter.
We use human-validated data, we also use human to validate our model improvement. This is critical because we're building a mission-critical product. We want to make sure the data and the model improvement are validated by humans. I've been talking about our AI flywheel, also what we're building as a scalable AI system. I'm going to give a little bit preview of what we think the near-term future would be. Of course, these are not the full list, and it's subject to change because the AI world is evolving really fast, and we will adjust our plan accordingly. Those are all hard problems to solve. At the center, we're going to build Evolv's foundation models. What is a foundation model? GPT, built by OpenAI, is a foundation model that understands text and language well.
What we're building at Evolv is a foundation model that understand threat detection, especially concealed weapon detection well. These two model are different. We're going to build our model based on our large amount of proprietary data that I mentioned previously, built to understand the real-world challenges and how to solve them, and also enable us to build more products and applications. This is extremely hard, but we believe by building this foundation, this will widen our technology moat and also keep driving the growth of the company. To summarize, I've been talking about our people, our AI flywheel, our data, our AI model, and also a little bit forward-looking, our foundation models. All of these innovations have one common goal. That is to fuel and grow our company. Here's how.
When we have new features and AI and software updates, we'll push this back to our fleet. That will increase the performance of our fleet and also increase the subscription value of our customers. When both those are happening, our customer will be happier, they will continue use our services and our product. They will renew with us, also this will drive more customers to use Evolv's product. Thank you.
Please welcome Robert Marshall, Chief Revenue Officer.
Good morning. I'm Robert Marshall. I'm the Chief Revenue Officer for Evolv Technologies. I joined the company in March of 2025. I have experience in international enterprise, state and local government, in the U.S. federal government space. I currently lead Evolv's go-to-market strategy and execution with clear accountability to new customer acquisition, retention, and execution, with a focus to drive consistency, predictability, and operating discipline. Today, I'm going to cover how we're organized for accelerated adoption of our products and services across our customer base. We're going to talk about our service model and how we leverage that, which is a differentiator for Evolv, to ensure that our customers renew, upgrade, and expand our products like Expedite and any new products that we may come out with in the future. Then we're going to talk about how we're investing in growth and building out our sales teams.
This is a look at our go-to-market model, if you will. We have a channel and a direct sales force. The channel team is focused on some of the mid-market reach, some integration leverage, as well as contract vehicles. We have a direct sales team that are focused on our top-tier customers and our top target accounts. We have a vertical market team as well. They're dedicated across all of our major verticals: education, healthcare, professional sports, and the industrial workplace. This team is a group of individuals, and you're going to hear from Jill Lemond in a few minutes, that have grown up in that space. They were professionals in these verticals, and when they talk to customers, they lead with their main expertise, and it's not just another salesperson in giving a product pitch.
We're very excited about the investments we've made to cover those key verticals. We have a geographic focus as well. We're focused primarily in the U.S. right now. About 95% of our sales team is in the U.S., but we see a great opportunity in the international space. We do have customers in international markets, and we're looking to continue to grow that, and it's primarily through channel. We are open to and looking at adding additional direct headcount where needed as the market grows. Our customer enablement team. This team is a cross-functional group spanning across customer success. They are simply focused on ensuring that our customers are happy throughout their entire relationship with Evolv, ensuring that they renew their contracts, and that we have the opportunity to upsell our new products.
At the end of the day, we're expanding our sales capacity and international capabilities to accelerate the revenue growth to the 25% CAGR that you've heard about in several presentations today. This is our high-touch service model. It's a world-class organization that is focused on providing the best service possible. You see the four service components on the left, and that solution is designed to ensure that our customers see the value, and we keep them as a customer for life. On-site service, it's a white glove on-site support at the customer location. We provide it at their location with our direct Evolv employees. This is not subcontracted out. Our employees are there providing that. We have comprehensive customer support, providing both tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 tech support.
This allows us to identify issues that may happen early in the field and ultimately get them to engineering to resolve the customer issues much faster. The software support, this is software updates that any customer can take advantage of as they're released. This is no additional cost to the customer. It's part of their subscription. The training and certification is something we provide both online as well as here in Waltham or on-site at a customer location. This is to ensure that not only our customers, but our channel partners all have the ability to understand how to operate the system optimally. This is a very highly differentiated model that our customers see value in and truly differentiates Evolv from some of our competitors.
Looking at the TAM, we've heard a lot about the enormous TAM that we have in front of us. We are investing on our front foot to expand our sales investment to help capture more of the global TAM that you see. We're going to do that by focusing on high-probability accounts, making sure we're spending time in the right accounts where we see the best opportunity, not necessarily chasing every single opportunity out there that may not be the best fit for Evolv. Absolutely, increasing our sales capacity as the market demands it. We're doing that by adding quota-carrying reps and optimizing our partner program to expand coverage across those priority accounts. Scaling the international go-to-market. Again, I touched on that. I think that's a nice growth opportunity for us.
Again, this is partner-led expansion that's going to be supported by targeted sales resources and enablement. The bottom line, our TAM is enormous. Our service, our products are proven. We're now investing on our front foot to ensure that we capture that market going forward. You're going to now hear from a customer, the Houston Astros, on their experience with Evolv, and how they expanded.
My name is Marcel Braithwaite. I'm the Senior Vice President of Business Operations with the Houston Astros. Evolv has been a great partner from day one. The ability to create a seamless entry into the building, where it is almost invisible that they've walked through security is fantastic. People want to come and create family memories that will last a lifetime, but they want to be here in a way that is safe and seamless. Starting with our first generation technology, we knew that this was a partner for a very long time. Their innovation has been really strong. Their leaning into new technology with AI and the fan experience is crucial to what we're looking for in enhancing our fan experience across the ballpark. The reason we picked Evolv Express second generation is because the first generation did so well for us in the fan experience.
The partnership with Evolv was great, too, as they brought their next technology to us in eXpedite, looking at the X-ray process of the bags. We chose to use eXpedite in two locations specifically that are most difficult in our building. One is our media entrance, where a ton of bags come through from the media. That's been a place where it's been really helpful to quickly allow these professionals in the building and allow their equipment undisturbed, and yet look for the threats. Adding eXpedite, I think, has increased our throughput. The analytics of the AI in assessing what's inside the bags has allowed us to expand upon prohibited items and/or reduce the amount of bags that we have to double-check. My favorite part about using Evolv eXpedite is its design and its simplicity. I really use the phrase sometimes that it's Marcel-proof.
If I can use it, anybody can use it. This device is phenomenal. It is really one that we've embraced, and we are grateful to have in our building. We've had zero downtime with the technology since we've had it. The response time for Evolv in regards to the partnership that we have in maintaining it and learning from the things that happen in our environment is really the reason why we continue to lean into this technology and this partner.
Please welcome Alex Ozerkis, Chief Marketing Officer.
Good morning. I'm Alex Ozerkis, CMO of Evolv Technology. I've spent over two decades driving demand and brand adoption across many different industries. I joined Evolv in 2022. I'm pleased to be here, along with my colleague, Robert Marshall, to talk about the strength of our go-to-market motion. Specifically, how marketing at Evolv drives growth. I'm going to talk about the market opportunity in front of us, why customers invest in weapons detection in general, and why they choose Evolv. Let me first set the stage by talking about what we believe drives the decision to invest in weapons detection. It could be one scenario is a violent event takes place at a venue, or even the threat of violence. This creates an immediate need to act.
Similarly, when an event takes place at a nearby venue or even a peer-like group, that can create pressure internally, politically, or amongst stakeholders of the community to do the same. Both of these scenarios tend to open deals. What pushes deals to close are conversations around legislation or litigation, the potential financial risk of not doing something, or when we see the beginnings of mandates, as you heard John talk about, where the discussion shifts from should we do weapons detection, to how do we comply? Both of those scenarios tend to push deals to close. We see security and screening and safety rising on the priority list of both public and private institutions, and budgets are following. We believe the market opportunity in front of us is large and mostly untapped. These are the four verticals where we see AI weapons detection hitting the hardest.
The first is schools or K12, where approximately 35% of our business takes place in any given quarter. School leaders are under pressure to get students in the door quickly, sometimes in under 15 minutes, without creating those long lines or soft targets you heard John talk about, or enabling a prison-like or airport-like experience for students and staff. Depending on the district, we will work with school resource officers, campus security, or law enforcement, ultimately superintendents and school boards, all of whom are trying to create welcoming environments while keeping weapons out. You'll hear Jill Lemond, our VP of Education, talk more about this in detail after the break. The second vertical, healthcare, hospital settings, approximately 15% of our business, is where the majority of workplace violence is taking place.
We see demand coming from nurses and nursing unions, workers within the hospital system who are asking for safer environments to do their job. Hospitals cannot create a scenario adding security where it could prevent a barrier to care or delay treatment. In the case of sports and entertainment, about 15% of our business, oftentimes, this is where customers first see Evolv deployed at their favorite ballgame or at a theme park. These customers are looking to get fans from the street to their seat as quickly as possible so that they can get their concessions, not miss the first pitch, settle in, and enjoy the experience that they paid for.
Oftentimes, these customers that we work with are deemed leaders in the security industry, running some of the most robust safety operations around. The fourth vertical you see there, which we see as an emerging market, is industrial workplaces and corporate office spaces, where the threat of violence is coming from the inside as well as the outside. Why do customers choose Evolv when they're considering weapons detection over other solutions or legacy screening? Well, at our core, Evolv is solving a very hard and very specific problem that you heard John and Owais and Sean talk about. Our customers need to balance three things. They need to balance high-confidence weapons detection, throughput, getting people in quickly, and experience, so we don't feel like we're going through that airport or courthouse. We hear from our customers the importance of that high-confidence detection.
Our customers, many of whom are former law enforcement or military professionals, do not take our word for it. They want to test these systems, try them, attempt to defeat them, and we very much understand the importance of that due diligence in the process, which is why we enable as many demos and pilots and opportunities for them to experience Evolv as possible. Once they've pressure tested our weapons detection and they're able to see that they can add extra layers of security without slowing people down, we then hear about the importance of how our technology is designed to reduce human error. Oftentimes, those manning security systems are doing so under pressure to get people in the door as quickly as possible. Guard fatigue is real. The ability to be socially engineered is real.
Oh, it's my watch," or, "My belt buckle goes off every time." "You know me, I'm here for the show every Friday night." Our localized threat detection, that Red Box you've seen and heard about, tells people where to look, who to search, and in the case of Evolv eXpedite, the system does the work for you. There is no need for a trained human operator. The third buying pillar we hear about is how our systems are portable, durable, and reliable. As you heard Owais talk about, our systems are designed to perform reliably across many different environments. That includes the elements of the outdoors, as well as the complex physics that take place inside a building, the metal surrounding me right here, the metal in the elevator bank, the many technological electronics that are in an ER. Our systems are designed to perform reliably across those settings.
Last, the power of our connected platform enables customers to operationalize, to see what's happening in their building, in their system, across entryways, and make staffing decisions, operational decisions in real time, so they can use data to improve their operational outcomes. Taken together, this is why we believe over 4.5 billion people worldwide have been screened by Evolv, and we continue to scan over 4 million people each day. Leads me to how we market at scale. Growth happens when sales and marketing move together as one, and from a go-to-market standpoint, we operate a highly targeted, data-driven approach. Our marketing and BDR, or inside sales teams, work in lockstep with our field sellers to identify priority accounts. We use market intelligence, predictive buying signals, and an ideal customer profile to reach those targets.
From demand to deployment, we have visibility at every stage. It starts with multichannel demand generation. That may be the many trade shows we participate in, the demos you heard me talk about, co-marketing with our channel partners, digital marketing, content marketing, where we leverage our network of experts in schools, in hospitals, in sports and entertainment to deliver informational content to our buyers. All of this drives inbound demand to our website, where leads are captured and responded to quickly, as well as enables effective outbound prospecting campaigns. All of this is tracked through our marketing funnel, from lead to nurture to meeting to order. That is what makes our model so strong. We have built a fully closed-loop marketing engine that gives us visibility from the moment a lead enters our system through to order. To that point, data drives our marketing decisions.
We layer on ROI tracking across every major marketing motion so that we can track performance across channels, scaling the tactics that drive quality pipeline over quantity and directly impact revenue, and pulling back on those that don't. One quick example of how this works in practice is our fleet of demo trucks. You may have seen one outside this building. If you haven't, I encourage you to go take a look during lunch and experience Evolv for yourself. We run a fleet of demo trucks. This is a cost-effective way for us to bring our brand and our systems across the country to enable as many demos as possible.
We may have a field seller partner with one of our BDRs, our inside sales reps, and a channel partner, identify a group of priority accounts in a specific geography, plan, promote, host an event there, bring our demo truck, bring in an outside expert on a timely topic. We are then able to track the leads, the opportunities, and ultimately the impact on revenue directly from that event. That is an example of the power of that closed-loop marketing engine I talked about. Let me bring this all to life with a real-world example. Spartanburg County School District 5 in South Carolina was an early school customer of Evolv. They initially deployed in 2022, ultimately scaling across all 14 schools in the district, upgrading to Gen 2, renewing, and most recently, adding eXpedite to their fleet.
That is an example of that renewal and expand motion you see at the bottom of the slides here. The district decided to survey their students and staff about how they felt about having weapons detection in their school. The results are what we believe is illustrative of the power of a leading indicator of long-term adoption of new technology, specifically technology that had never been screened or used in a school setting like this before for Spartanburg. Nearly 95% of respondents said Evolv was easy to use, easy to navigate. Over 92% said they felt either neutral or positive about having weapons detection in their school, and over half said they felt safer with Evolv in the building. Similarly, the operational data showed smooth throughput during the peak morning arrival times, which we know is the most complicated time for a school customer.
We believe this is illustrative of the power of those four buying pillars that I talked about playing out in a real-world outcome, as well as an example of our customer loyalty arc. That is advocacy, expansion, and renewal. The exact customer journey that we are working to scale across our customer base. I think it's always best to hear directly from our customers. With that, Spartanburg County School District 5.
When parents drop their kids off every day, what they really want more than anything is for their child to come home safely. Every additional layer of protection that you add can help you in the long run. Security screenings have been conversations we've had for quite a while. Before jumping into the deep end, we said, "Well, it may be good if we pilot this." We communicated to parents what we were doing and why we were doing it. We wanted parents to know this was something that we were planning to do. It was preventive. It was a very successful pilot. Our board said, "We're in a good financial position now, let's roll it out now." It may be a price, but you can't put a cost on safety. The Evolv staff was here.
They were here every day along the way to see how it worked and what they needed to do to advise our students. There were some questions initially in the beginning, but those questions have gone away. I had one parent that he just was not happy with what we're doing, and he had exchanged multiple emails of why this was just not a good idea. Unfortunately, there was a shooting that really impacted the entire community. That next morning, I opened my email, and I had an email from that parent. I'd like to read it. It's very brief. "God has a way of setting us straight. I pray he's with the blank school and their families. Thank you for the inconvenience of safety, sir. I stand humbled and corrected." I appreciate this parent for sending this email to us.
It's been several years since we have probably gotten a concern about it because we've been doing it for about four years now. People are used to it. We're glad to have been a leader in providing this for our community.
Let's take a 10-minute coffee break and continue shortly.
[Break]
Our primary objectives for security is to have a smooth flow, at the same time, bring that safe environment to the school. We added the screening. That's just that extra layer. We wanted to evaluate the systems, and Evolv was great to bring a pilot system out. Walking through weapons on different places just to see how it operated. It was very low on false alerts.
My main role is I stand at the tablet for Express. I monitor when alerts go off for Express and send them over. The tablet, it gives me a picture of who went off. I grab their attention, typically by what they're wearing. The tablet will put a Red Box, it gives us a better idea of what we're looking for.
Not only did it alert when there was a potential weapon, it helped narrow down to where that weapon was.
When Express was introduced, I say at first it was definitely a process. Students didn't know what to take out of their bags when they beeped. They didn't know it was beeping. Once they got a few tries in, it definitely got a smoother process along. Once Expedite was introduced, I think it was just fairly simple.
It's very positive because they're not having to take their laptops and throw green binders out anymore.
It's such a faster process in the morning. We just take our backpacks off, send it through the machine, then head away to class.
Another benefit of having eXpedite and Express is separating the bag from the person actually walking through. That way, the bag alerts, the security officer or staff member can take control of that bag.
If a bag goes off for eXpedite, the machine will stop. It turns red. We have a colleague of mine grab the bag and take it to our security officer so he can check it.
Another feature that we like is the tablet showing both the eXpedite and Express system all in one screen. The security folks can have one tablet that they're working off of and see everything in one place.
I think it is a very organized routine because we've been taught the expectation of what is supposed to happen down there, and if your bag goes off, you move to the side, and they check it. If it's not, you keep going on your way to class, and you don't hold up the line. I think it is a very organized process because we have been taught the expectation of what is to be done when we go through.
It's a very low level of feedback that we've had from students as saying they don't like it. We've had an overwhelming response of them either being neutral or actually liking having the system in place. Not having a screening process is just leaving that unknown out there. You don't know if something's coming into school or not. When we added the screening, that's just that extra layer of safety that helps feel safe to come to school.
Please welcome Jill Lemond, Vice President, Education.
Hi. Good morning. I'm excited to be here with all of you today. I'm really proud to lead our school's vertical. I have two other individuals on my team that I couldn't do this work without, that I want to mention. I did have the opportunity to meet some of you about three years ago at Fenway Park, and you got to hear my story, sort of my origin story of how I came to Evolv. For those of you who are not aware, I was an assistant superintendent in a school district in Southeast Michigan. In 2021, we experienced the worst. We had four of our students taken from us with a gun incident on campus and seven others who were injured.
I was an assistant superintendent at that time and took over safety and security post-incident and really met some of the individuals in this room during the worst period of my life. I'm a little ashamed to say I was not my nicest self when I met them. I'll explain to you why. That is because our first gunshots were at 12:51 P.M. It could not have been 3:00 where we were still in active threat lockdown with the fear of a second potential shooter. I was starting to receive vendor messages as a school employee. I had equal parts messages coming in from my family, "Honey, are you okay? Are you safe? Where are you at?" Then I would get an email, "Hey, we heard you've had loss of life on your campus.
If only you'd had our blank, this might not have happened." That tone-deaf, inhumane attitude stuck with me. Fortunately, when I met Evolv, it was a very different experience. I was on a Zoom call at the time. Think back to the COVID days. I had my arms crossed, I remember distinctly. I had been told that I needed to talk to these people because they had something I needed. Well, I had already been through that probably about 20x at that point, of pitches of all these other products that somebody knew I needed. Those people had a really insulting attitude.
They didn't honor the work that I had already done, that my colleagues had already done with regards to safety and security, and just assumed that we were a blank slate who had never had discussions about this before. In complete opposition to that, when the Evolv team came on the camera, I actually did not know what they sold for a long time. Instead of pitching me products and talking to me about solutions, they started asking me real questions. How are you, human being? Did you know any of the students? Were you impacted? Are you safe? How's your family? Then the next point being, we have a broad security network of experts across the country. What can we do for you? How can we help you? I didn't even know what the thing was at the time, and now we have more than one thing, right?
What the thing was that they could give me. After they provided that for me and for my school, I watched in action how that transformed the culture of safety in that community and how it went from, "Oh my goodness, we can't believe this horrific thing happened here," to, "We are going to do everything within our power to stop something like this from happening again." I'm really privileged to go into different school communities across the country and have conversations like that. My favorite conversations are in the preventative space where we're talking proactively, unfortunately, my team and myself have been on site after some incidents as well and experienced the opposite side of that coin as the vendor myself.
We bring that experience and that understanding of what these schools are going through into every conversation, ensuring that we're not having fear-based sales conversations, but real ones, and honoring the work that's already been done in these communities. It's important because I'm not in the classroom and I'm not in an administrative role at this moment, that the longer I'm outside of it, I need to stay rooted in the data for me. I need to make sure I have the pulse of those schools because I'm no longer working in one, right? I'm always looking to the numbers. While I'm discussing with you a particular mass casualty incident, that is not the most likely scenario for our schools, and they know that.
The research shows on the K12 school shooting database, if you have the opportunity to check it out, we're keeping track of how many individuals are injured, how many people are killed, and what's happening on our school campuses. That data shows that of the last 300 gun incidents on campus, the majority of them were escalations of a dispute. The second highest on that list was accidental firings of a firearm. What does that say to me? That says to me that the majority of our school professionals know that their students do not have nefarious intent. They're not expecting a mass casualty incident, and they probably, hopefully, will not experience one. What is more likely to happen from a data-driven perspective is that students are habitually carrying these guns on campus, probably with no intention of using them.
When they have a dispute, when something occurs between two adolescents, it quickly becomes catastrophic simply because they have proximity to that weapon and access. I dedicated the second half of my career to preventing gun violence in schools, and I'm excited to be here in a place where that mission is woven into everything that we do. It's in the fiber of who we are and the people that I have the privilege of working beside every day. Firearm-related injuries continue to be the number one cause of death of our children. I have four of my own kids, and I don't accept that. I'm not okay with that. I don't want to live in a place where that's the case, I'm committed to changing that alongside all of the people in this room, right? 55 school gunfire incidents.
That was just as of last week when this slide was created. I imagine by this point, there's already more that haven't been captured yet. We know that our schools are these nuanced environments to protect. You heard a lot about that this morning. I don't want to be duplicative, but I do want to paint a picture for you. We heard about that line outside of John's daughter's school, right? I've been in many of these schools, and I've seen those lines. I've seen what can happen when you use legacy screening techniques and students start to build up as outside of the building. I've watched those security operators who are put sometimes in impossible situations where they're standing at the door, the bell has gone off, and there are still many students waiting to get to class.
Particularly in our public schools, those students have a right to get into those seats and to receive that education. That operator has a pressure on them that is very different than other environments that we try to protect. That person needs to get those kids in the building, what I've seen happen too often is that operator saying, "Okay, honey, come on. I know you. Let's go. We got to get to class. We got to get in the building." When we talk about discrimination or bias in the processes, that is where I've seen it creep in. It can creep in at that point because then who does get stopped?
If we're using a metal detection system and our student's carrying a phone through and the majority of our kids have access, whether it's a Chromebook or what have you, and most of them are going to set it off and I'm the operator and I don't have time to go through that search with every kid. I'm put in a position where I have to choose which students to stop, which students to search. Unfortunately, that's where we can see bias creep in. There's no shortage of research that's been done on the school-to-prison pipeline and what it can look like in a metal detection situation, and that's why. These are well-meaning people who are put in difficult situations. We're trying to relieve that pressure.
We're trying to help them to quickly locate the potential threat and allow for a very targeted search of that student that minimizes that invasion of privacy and helps to restore their sense of dignity as they're coming into school. Our schools need to feel good. Culture and climate are actually one of the leading predictors of potential violence. It needs to feel good at school. We want it to feel good at school. I don't want us to forget that in most of these cases, we're talking about children, screening children. I see my job and the role of my staff, we're looking at this through the lens of, is this good for kids, this screening process, this new technology, as we're doing R&D? Is it good for teaching and learning? We have to get to the business of school once we get inside.
We don't want there to be fear and anxiety as people are coming in the buildings every day. We don't want them to lose their dignity and to have every single item emptied from their bag every single day. That does not feel good. We know that as adults, but particularly for children. We've seen a lot of different districts, Alex talked about it, where they have the it can't happen here mentality until it does. Many cases that's finding a weapon, whether a student through word of mouth, talks about, "I saw Johnny had a gun today," et cetera, or God forbid, something actually happens. There's an event on campus and there's loss of life or injury. We meet customers a lot of times that way. What we're hearing from our customers is this sense of anxiety.
If you look at the research, we've had a mass exodus of teachers and educational professionals from the field. There are many reasons for that. One of those reasons that's frequently cited is anxiety, and I'll take that a step further. I believe it's related to gun or violence anxiety in those classrooms. This is not only a technology that's helping to keep our students safe and our children safe, like I mentioned, but also for staff. I've seen schools list the fact that they are Evolv screening in their actual postings for jobs, using it as a recruitment tool or retention tool in their teachers' contracts because teachers want to work in places that are safe. As we continue to show them and to prove ourselves in the market, our systems are helping to keep those spaces safer. We're also seeing peer adoption.
There becomes this pressure that Alex mentioned where if your sister school district or someone nearby is doing it, "Man, I went to a football game, and I noticed they had this screening system. Why aren't you using Evolv?" We also get into districts that way as well, where we explain it. That's why we really like to take schools on the road. Come and see us. Seeing is believing with our system. It's hard to describe how it's different and why it's different for kids. We love to invite schools to other school districts where they can watch their peers who have similar wants and needs, bringing students into the building quickly and safely in the mornings using our systems.
Of course, that liability risk after an incident or after an incident nearby, we start to talk about what is the cost of safety and what is the cost of having an incident. Those are really unfortunate conversations to have, but they're very real out in the workplace right now. As we continue to build our reputation in education, it's been important to me that we work in nonprofit spaces. Why is that? I told you that I want to keep learning. I also think it's important to help contribute to that space, some of the things, lessons that I learned in the hardest ways. To meet those people who are also trying to solve this very hard problem. This is one layer of safety and security for our schools.
If I were to put up a screen here of all the other things that they're trying to prioritize from a funding perspective, from a time and energy perspective, and again, we're trying to get to curriculum. We're trying to get to teaching. We're trying to get to learning. That's the ultimate goal, is that we are in a space that is so safe that we can all relax and get back to business. That's what we're trying to do for these schools. I love to be involved in those advisory boards and talking with these nonprofits and better understanding the schools. I would prefer to go to those events, speaking for myself, than a trade show any day because I'm learning at the same time, right? We also see our schools come to us because they saw us at a game. They saw us somewhere else.
The ease of use. I don't want to speak broadly across every single school customer because some of our school districts have the opportunity to hire robust security teams. Many of our school districts do not. Many of the districts that we interact with, their security operation is being run by individuals like I was in that role as the assistant superintendent of safety and security with an English language arts degree, a teaching certification, and an MBA. That's much more common that I'm interacting with someone who has an educational leadership masters who is saying, "Maybe I don't even want to do this." Right? "I didn't sign up for this. I don't know how to do this." We are put in a position to help to educate them.
That's a very big responsibility that we take seriously. I take very personally, actually, in those conversations with our schools. As they're balancing all of these different security considerations with staffing concerns and all of the other things, they need a mission partner. They need someone that they can trust who's going to come in and not sell them a thing, but learn about them, ask them the same types of probing questions that Evolv asked me to better understand the great work they've already done and the goals that they have for their particular campuses. I have a very close friend in the school industry outside of Evolv who always says, "If you've been in one school, you've been in one school." Even within a school district, campus by campus, some of our building, you know the older building versus the brand-new build or what have you.
Every building presents its own unique challenges. I'm proud of our staff who go into those buildings, who ask the questions, who survey the situation, and actually watch as students come in in the morning and roll up their sleeves and do that work beside the school districts. Those are my favorite days at Evolv, going out in the field and doing those things. That Red Box really is a differentiator. I talked about the potential bias. When I was a system operator at the school right before I left, I had had teenagers question me, if you can believe that. "Why did you stop me and not my friend?" What I loved as an operator was the opportunity to show those students why. "Honey, come on over here. Let's look at the tablet. I didn't stop you.
The system saw something that appeared threatening right here where this Red Box is. Let's find out what it is. Presuming it's not a gun and not a bladed weapon, let's not bring it to school tomorrow. Let's find an alternative way for you to use that item because I don't want to stop you every day."Our system is not looking at people, it's not looking at faces, it's looking at shapes and it's looking at things. It's letting the people who operate it make those important interactions with students, make that eye contact with kids. We have an attendance problem across this country. I want kids to know that we're happy they came to school today. I don't want to make it any more difficult to get them to their seats.
Learning their names, spending that time at the front door connecting with kids and doing what most of those people who are operating the system were trained to do, is really, really valuable to our customers. That's what we hear all the time. "Thank you for letting the people do the people things again." That's important. That white glove customer service, like I said, we don't just drop a box off at our schools. Instead, we're there with them. Not just me, and not even often me, but a team of people who come in and say, "I'm not leaving until you're successful. I'm not leaving until you're comfortable operating the system on your own. I'm going to hold your hand on day one, and then I'm going to step back on day two, and I'm going to watch you guys do it.
I'm going to answer questions, and we're going to debrief," or do a hot wash is what we call it, to talk about what happened that day, to make sure that you feel safe and you feel confident in the operations of this system when Evolv leaves the building. I'm really proud of the way that we deliver that stellar customer service to our schools. Then again, the fact that we're constantly, multiple times a year, having software updates. This is not just a piece of equipment, this is something that is getting smarter over time for those schools. You've already seen some of these numbers, but I do think the fact that we're screening over a million school students and visitors every day is a fantastic stat to be aware of. That's huge.
These students are experiencing our system, instead of seeing it as something that's happening at them or to them, it's something that's happening with them, and it's something that's happening for them. I think that's a really important mindset shift. There are no better days here at this company than when we're sitting and we get a text message or a phone call that a gun has been stopped at a doorway. That kind of energy will keep me here for as many years as they'll have me, because it is the best feeling to know that we're stopping weapons. You saw how many we're stopping on a very regular basis. We are in over 20 of the top 100 school districts across the country. That's an important piece of information.
I also want you to know that we're in rural districts, we're in tribal schools, we're in small school districts, we're in big school districts. Violence does not know a particular type of school, we have to be ready and able to protect and help all of them. I love having those conversations, again, whether it's at a trade show or more importantly, on their campus. We talked a little bit about how schools buy. There are many different stakeholders. It can be a difficult sales process in terms of the amount of time and energy that needs to be put in to educate. Particularly if, like John said, they were doing nothing and we're replacing nothing. Having them understand why we're doing what we're doing, what can the system do, and maybe just as important, what are its limitations?
What is it capable of and what is it not doing for you? Bless you. That requires communicating with not only the decision makers in the district, but also the parents who are really tuned into this safety conversation as they should be. That means answering really hard questions on community nights or showing up for school board meetings and being brought up to the podium and asked questions that are difficult to answer. That's what we want to do. We want to spend that time educating our buyers so that they know what they're getting, and again, they know the limitations of the technology as well. Our channel has been exceptionally important in the way we deliver excellence. That's because they have, in many cases, relationships with the end users in their regions. A lot of times we are meeting the schools through our channel partners.
Again, pilots. I just want to talk real briefly about pilots and demos. Seeing is believing. We want our schools to see our system in action. We want to get up at five something in the morning, which a lot of my teammates and myself do, and go with a potential customer to a current customer site so they can watch what it looks like when real children with real backpacks are walking through our systems. This eXpedite product you've already seen some school people talk about how it changed their particular operations. As we discussed, some of us three years ago, schools are very high clutter environments and they are nuanced. We want them to feel open. We want them to feel inviting. We want them to feel welcoming. At the same time, keeping that protection paradox in mind. Right?
What we are seeing day in and day out now is our students who are dropping not only their backpacks like we saw in the video, but their band equipment, their sport and athletic equipment, all of the stuff that kids bring. We were at one deployment and one of my partners came up to me and said, "Did you know that some girls bring curling irons to school?" I say, "Yeah, some schools are offering breakfast. Our kids are getting ready in the morning. Who knows what could be in these backpacks?" To say they're challenging to screen is an understatement, and that eXpedite system has been a game changer in those districts who have adopted it.
We've seen early receptivity, in many cases an extreme sense of excitement around the eXpedite product. What I see it as is an opportunity to revisit those 350 customers who already trust us and say, "How are we doing and could we do better? Is there something we could do that would offer you an even higher level of safety and security every day and let you run your operations more smoothly?" In particular, I mentioned my sort of origin story in my school district. Without my help, intentionally and outside of the sales process on my own, for my own personal reasons, they chose to expand. I haven't been there in over four years now.
Not only do they have the Evolv Express, but that's a small district, a single high school district that expanded and has our Evolv eXpedite at both their high school and their middle school locations. I'm proud of that. We've talked a little about what's changing with regards to safety potential mandates. We've seen that not only in the U.S., but also in some countries abroad, in particular in Latin American countries, looking at potential safety and security mandates regarding weapons detection in schools. We also are hearing from our schools, "Hey, why do we have this at the high school and not the middle school?" Or, "My child has a sibling, and I want this at the sibling's school as well." We're hearing a sense, overwhelmingly, of standardization and access across grade levels in our schools. That's been a strong conversation out in the market as well.
I want to leave you just with the quote of this customer, in a district that I feel particularly close to, for reasons because of how they experienced Evolv. They also had a violent incident occur, and I was there with teammates on day three post-incident. This district in Metro Nashville schools found five weapons in their first five months of screening, and I think an even more interesting stat, they found three in one of the first few weeks. Again, did every one of those students have nefarious intent? I can't speak to that, but I doubt it, personally. What is much more likely is that there are more guns on our campuses than we realize, that are being brought habitually to school, that we need to keep out of our buildings, and that's something that we wake up every day committed to doing here at Evolv.
It's been independently verified by third parties who do this for a living that our staff feel safe coming to work. I know the Evolv Technology has been a big impact on that.
Safety is one of our biggest factors. We went from a 30% vacancy rate to a 2.7% vacancy rate. It is a huge factor for our retention of our nursing staff. Not only increases the retention, but also the morale of the staff.
Please welcome Anil Chitkara, Co-founder and Chief Growth Officer, and Regina Lombardo, Chief Security Officer, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
John shared the catalyst that was the founding of Evolv, the Boston Marathon bombing. I was there. I was there with my kids. My wife was running it, and she came across, as John mentioned, a good friend was severely injured there, and I went and visited him. About four months and one day prior to that was the Sandy Hook tragedy. In the days in between those two events were 51 mass shootings. It became very clear that we needed to do something about that, and that's why we started Evolv and created the mission we're on. We've done a lot of good, but there's much more to do. As we look forward, I spend my time looking and working on growth initiatives with John and the executive team.
What you've heard earlier from Owais and from Sean on the products we've built and the technology we're developing, and from Robert and from Alex on how we reach our customers, is what we need to do. As we think about new products and new opportunities, the answers for that are not upstairs in our office. The answers for that are outside with security professionals, talking to venues about the challenges that they're trying to face and address. We are inspired and informed by those customers. We have various ways to get input from them, both formal and informal ways. Today, we're privileged to have one of those customers, Regina Lombardo, here with us today. Regina spent about 30 years at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. She finished that tenure as the acting director and has tremendous experience there. Thank you for that service.
You're welcome. Thank you.
She spent about the last five years as chief security officer of Oops, sorry about that. Of the Met, in looking at their security and revamping the security there. Thank you for joining us.
Oh, you're welcome.
Many of us have heard about ATF but may not know about it. If you could just spend a minute or two describing the mission and focus of ATF and some of the work that you did there.
Well, I could tell you that ATF is probably one of the most complex agencies. We enforce the federal gun laws, regulate the gun industry. As you could imagine, we're the only agency that enforces a law that's attached to the Constitution, so it's a little bit complex. Started out as a street agent enforcing the gun laws, but for the most part, started my career in Miami, and next thing I know, I was sitting at the seat as the Director of ATF. Not only do we, of course, the public safety, I was a special agent, many cases, but also when you become the Director, you're also dealing with the firearms industry, which can be kind of challenging.
I would say the right to bear arms, yes, it's very red, very blue on both sides of the aisle, but I think everybody would agree on gun violence. It's the crime guns that we like to go after. I spent 30 years of my career doing that.
Yeah. With your time at ATF and then more recently at the Met, you've seen the threat environment.
Yes
It's changed over time. It's certainly quite a dynamic environment today. How would you characterize the threat environment today and how it's been different the last five years?
Well, I guess, coming from a public safety background, and instilled inside you as far as it's always mitigating risk. You're constantly looking at the threats, whether you're in law enforcement, you're constantly preparing for undercover operations or any type of operations. You're constantly evolving into what's the threat that's happening, and how do we protect the public? You sort of bring that thread through to the Met. Now at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, many people don't quite understand that it's, I always say it's a living, breathing organism, the Met, right.
the threats change so often on any given day, really, from one moment it could be climate activism, one moment it could be just who's coming in to visit the Met, and having those threats change is something that keeps us sort of on our toes and constantly reevaluating of what we need to mitigate those risks. Currently, right now, when I started the position, it's what is the greatest risk that the Met faces? And me as a Chief Security Officer, what do I own? What do I own? What is my responsibility? That what I went into thinking is not the same as it was at the reality of it, what I inherited. Of course, coming out of COVID, your threats were different.
Maybe it was workforce, the shortage of workforce, also then it evolved into emerging threats and whether it was happening around the world, geopolitical, that now we've evolved into after the Louvre heist, our threats have changed. Now we have to look at our massive amount of capital project and construction, and with an increase of 400 contractors coming in besides the 20,000 a day. It's what I would say is very dynamic in how we look at the threat, and every day it changes. Unlike some of the same, you can see the trends, patterns, whether it's ball fields or other institutions, buildings that many of your customers have. For us it changes on sometimes a given day.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I want to get into the Met itself, there's some very topical news this week in the summer. The World Cup is starting.
Yeah
tomorrow in Mexico, then a couple of days later in the U.S.. We have America 250 and all the celebrations there. In general, how do security professionals think about securing those types of events?
I think New York, very fortunate that we are very integrated, all chief security officers from banks to cultural properties, from Broadway, Yankee Stadium, Citi Field. We are very integrated. We also are very much in partnership in the preparing of it with the FBI's JTTF and many of the other organizations and DHS. Every state, local, federal, we've already had many massive meetings on how it affects the public, yes, public sector, but also the private sector. With that amount of influx of people from America 250 entertainment, what's happening around on 4th of July to the FIFA at the same time, each of the venues have been meeting on a monthly basis as far as even the increase in people. I always say the threat sort of begins to have ripple effects, right? At the Met, we will have increase in tourism.
We will have increase in people. When there's that amount of momentum happening in the city, it really takes a collaborative effort of all state, local, and federal that has to be integrated. Preparing for that has many aspects, from the traffic patterns to frozen zones. Like yesterday during the Knicks game, right, we have frozen zones that people can't move.
Yeah.
The traffic gets bottled up. That creates an additional threat. It creates an additional threat because you have people that have intentions that like to hijack, what I call hijack events. For us, it's the steps to the Met. It's pretty iconic for those watch TV and movies. We do a lot of that there. It's a very high-profile place as well. It's not just a museum. For this, we each have a piece for FIFA as far as the America 250. We have snipers on the roof for the 4th of July every year. When we have St. Patrick's Day parade, we do the same preparing. We use a lot of our new cameras on the outside, AI integrated into those cameras, with operators on the roof as well.
Good. Let's talk about the Met a little bit.
Yeah.
Can you first give us some context? It's a massive museum.
It's got lots of people coming in it.
It's got a lot of artwork. Could you just give us some context for what it is and then what you're dealing with?
I will say it's like a small city. 21 buildings put together, 2.2 million sq ft. There is not just, we say there's a living, breathing organism, the Met. It's like a living soul. You have people from all around the world that have nothing in there could ever be replaced, right? We would have maybe one Van Gogh that's a $998 million for one painting, and there's millions and millions of what we call collection, right? Figuring out my first responsibility walking in was it's not just a building that you're protecting, like your stadiums, you have buildings, you have people going in and out. For us, the people's all day in and out. All day. We have six different entrances, three for the public, two for staff.
Trying to find the best way to access control, but keeping that what I call in policing it's very authoritative, and you have to have control, and buildings like to show that force and control. For us, it's restraint. It's about not having so much visible control. It's allowing for an experience, and you're preserving an experience. That's the biggest difference between a lot of my colleagues who work in different buildings and venues. We're preserving an experience that people come from all over the world.
You have people from school children, like we heard of earlier, lots of tour groups that come in, people that want to be there because they want to pray to a certain object from their country, or family and relatives and generations and generations have been passed down to, whether it's cry over the fact that they have this beautiful collection there. On any given day, it could be chaotic and crazy, then the next moment it could be a sanctuary where it's very peaceful and very calming. Learning how to navigate the different areas of that. That's the day. At night, we did 375 events last year. We're obviously well-known for the most famous event. It's a very global event. It's watched more than the Super Bowl and more than the Oscars, which is the Met Gala, because it is international.
That's what we call our Super Bowl. Right? We wait all year, and the preparation for that is enormous. Each year you start to learn what was the risk. Last year we didn't do very well in this area. We didn't have the tent set up enough where I felt confident that we had Fifth Avenue blocked down, that we had the areas that we feel. We had some attempted crashers, which is in my book, it's a failure if I have a crasher. It's something that we really pride ourselves in. On any given day, it could be your day to day to day, which is 20,000 a day. On the weekends, we'll get 20,000, 30,000. Holidays, 40,000 max on a before Christmas, a day. Our systems have to be efficient enough to allow for that experience, that rapid, rapid.
It's unlike events where there's a time on it. Here's your ticket. School starts a certain time. This is a constant. This is all day. This is all day in and out. At night, we almost do a flip of a switch. We close, and the whole place transforms into this beautiful, elaborate. We have the greatest artists in the world that make these events spectacular, and it turns into that kind of a space at night. We also have to do access control for the many of the people that walk through those doors to include your A-listers, your most famous football players, baseball players, stars, actors, actresses, singers, you name it, and we do access control of every person that goes through there.
Yeah. You talked about the threat environment. We've seen violence, vandalism-
Yeah
Heists, particularly in museums. You talked about sort of two halves of what you deal with as I think about it, the day-
The night and the very difference there. How do you organize all of these threats? How do you figure out the impact they might have? Ultimately, how do you figure out how to prioritize your resources, your technology, your team, so that you can address those threats in as holistic a manner as possible?
Sure. I'll tell you, because of how complex it is, we have to really reevaluate and look, what's my blind spots? What am I missing? For events, something like the Met Gala, one incident that can happen at that event far exceeds the cost of any system that I can purchase. Between your brand reputation, your business continuity, the fact that that event alone makes $40 million a day. One event. I look at what are those priorities that I really have to tighten up and focus more. We may have to shift in the ones that we know have more high profile, but the everyday person that goes in deserves that level of experience, too. Deserves that. I feel today, having the team that I have, and many of the security officers that work there on the guard level are actually not law enforcement or security backgrounds.
Most of them are artists, they have a very devotion to protecting this type of building. I look at my workforce. We're about 560 in security. 400 are union, so I have to deal with some of the complexities with union staffing. Sitting back and now looking at a new operations center that we're constructing, 5,500 sq ft, a 40-foot video monitoring wall, I've sort of modeled how I worked in policing. In policing, if you walk into police departments, you'll see real-time crime centers. That's how I monitor. I want to see everything that's happening. Instead of real-time crime, I just change that into real-time incidents.
What's happening in the building at any given moment, whether it's an art touch, whether it's a slip and fall, someone had a heart attack, fire in another building, I'm able to now be able to see that and have all of my systems, including Evolv, integrated into our operations center, and of course, AI-driven, where I can now see it in real time. That has allowed me to sort of see the bigger picture in where I need to send my workforce. How do I change my workforce when we have exhibitions? Exhibitions bring in a lot more people. They're only there for a limited amount of time, whether it's a Van Gogh exhibition. Now we have the Raphael exhibition from Italy. For that, it's changing the workforce and maybe being more proactive in moving our frontline staff to be more efficient in that.
When I started, I'll end with this. When I went into this position, I looked at having to reorganize the structure of the operational structure, it was about frontline efficiency. It's where your systems come in. How do I become more efficient in the frontline and back of the house intelligence? It's all about, for me, intelligence driven, if we're following the intelligence, it'll tell you where you need to work and where you need to focus. That's in a roundabout way, I hope I answered your question, but it's about having the right operational structure and the organizational structure for better oversight and accountability. In federal government, it's really about oversight and accountability as making sure that we are delivering for the American people.
Yeah. You mentioned it. I want to talk a little bit about advanced weapons screening and Evolv.
Yeah
the use of Evolv there. Here's two examples of screening there. The Met and you and your team have worked with our products for, I think, five years or more now.
You initially decided to move forward with us.
If you can look back or reflect now, what are the key requirements and considerations for weapon screening and how did we do? What's different about us? How are we doing? How do you see Evolv relative to other options you could consider?
I've educated myself before I started at The Met to understand a bit more about Evolv, I've been aware of it in the past. I have friendships with the National Football League, head of security for football, for baseball, what are people using? I was very pleased to see that they were using Evolv. I will say for me personally, and you know I always say, "Hey, no one's got lockdown." Right? I say, "No one's got lockdown." Every single year a contract comes up, I am pulling it apart. I'm looking at other options. I want to make sure I have the best product. The best product for The Met might not be the best product for someone else. I always say for what I need, and that's being able to listen to the customer.
For us, it's what I talked about, that quiet, that more when you don't see security heavy is when you're doing a good job, especially if it's in cultural properties and giving that experience to people. Utilizing the system for me was first learning it. When I had some hiccups, I learned very quickly it was because it was user error. It was us. It was us maybe not understanding what we needed to do, I would say we had to do our part. I have to say what allows me to stay with customers, is customer service, to be honest with you. The product, it still works. It's efficient.
It does for me, the difference in others, I've been to every stadium you could think of, every company that's out there, I've met with every CEO of every company that's out there that was trying to sell me different products. I particularly appreciate the efficiency of people just being able to walk through, also being very specific on not taking the time to stop and look and wondering where this alarm went off, where could it be? Being a little bit more efficient and efficient in where the Red Box shows up. Then it became teaching the staff a bit more, educating them on the calibration and the testing every day.
I think once we kind of found our rhythm, it took a little bit, because I think that when they got the systems, it was just let people walk through. There were no SOPs written, I'm a huge believer in SOPs, you have to write from the minute you start your shift, what's your post order? Working with the Evolv system, it's certain people are better at it, right? Now I start to watch the patterns of people who are working there and what's missing in that. So far it's been great. I have to say I'm always looking for the future because the threats change.
Things I need, my mind's going a mile a minute, sitting here listening because there's so many things I want to chat with you about, on some new things that we're doing at the Met that I would love to partner and try to figure out how to do it better.
Yeah. That's good. You mentioned you're always looking. Last year, our initial contract came up, and I know we had the conversations.
Yep
You thought hard about what to do next, and you renewed with us.
You upgraded to the Gen 2 product.
Two.
Any quick thoughts on how that's working or the evaluation?
It's working great. I remember the day that it was a big to-do that we finally were launching, and the whole company was great in that process of us needing, you have to deal with all the, I would say, the nuts and bolts. You have procurement, you have lawyers, you have all these what I call, you have to go whitewater rafting until you get the contract signed. I didn't lose faith that it was going to happen.
There were some rapids, though.
There were some rapids. It was never a product issue. It was trying to get over hurdles of red tape, I call it. Changing of people who were once familiar with the contract and had to redo it again. You graciously were able to allow me to continue working and deliver the product even though we were still kind of nailing down. I'll share that with you. I love the fact that as soon as we had the new, they installed it, they were there, very efficient, very professional. I take, we're armed. I have a few of us that are armed at work. There's about 12, 13 of us that carry, and my first thing is I'm testing it.
I was super excited when I had gun on the ankle, another one up here, products different places, and it popped up on two different places and locations. Which for us, even better. I love the data. I would say that the data I get from the system helps educate. I'm learning how to teach the people who are working in the front, the security officers, how to use that data and to make sure that you're hitting the box that says it's a gun, you're hitting the box that's an umbrella, you're hitting the box that says it's a water bottle or something that's heavy metal. I said, "Does it know the difference," I say, "between a firearm, a bomb, a pipe bomb, and the umbrella?" Sometimes it's telling you where to look. It's been great, the Gen2. I'm a fan.
Good. Thank you. Thank you for your continued support and confidence in us.
Yeah.
As you look at other areas within The Met, you were starting to touch on this, you think about we've got Express, we have the eXpedite bag screening, you've got a sneak peek upstairs.
Yeah, I do.
At some of the product concepts. Without getting into the products themselves, how do you think about us and what we're building and how it may play a role in your expansion plans as you're trying to continue the security evolution there?
I think it's what I love about, especially our relationship, I've known you now five years. I want to share something new that we're doing, or we have a new challenge. I think what I feel the most comfortable is having that ability to share it with you and ask me how do we fix this? Because The Metropolitan Museum of Art right now is under massive construction, two issues and two products pop into my mind. Yes, 400 additional contractors are coming in. I'm looking at the rapid bag, the drop and press come in. I'm looking at, okay, that's a great solution. Now we're going to be opening up a fine dining, high-end restaurant on Fifth Avenue, and a new retail store right off of Fifth Avenue.
I'm looking for a better way, because it's a museum that happens to have a restaurant. I still have to figure a way to have a sort of a professional, a smoother way into the restaurant where people aren't feeling this sense of I'm getting through a weapons detection before I go into a fine dining restaurant. Complicated, but I think there's working with you guys to figure out something that's less conspicuous or a way to kind of make it still not feel that you're going to be secure. Looking at the future, and of course, I popped in here last time I drove through just to say, "Hey, what's new?
What are you guys working on?" I think that if you're not staying ahead of things or more aligned with what's happening in the world, especially coming out of law enforcement, I stay current. I still make sure that I go to IACP, International Association of Chiefs of Police, your major city chiefs. I'm on many boards, the National Center for Policing. Many of the things that I learn there, I try to bring here and say, "Hey, this is a new weapon." ghost guns. I could say as the head of the organization, I was constantly being challenged with how come we don't enforce the ghost guns with ATF? There was lots of complications to that because it technically had to meet the definition of a firearm and all sorts of things.
I have the background to share with you to say there's so many different pieces within that that would still be able to go off. That's something new that we're looking at, too. How do I figure out that piece that maybe I think that we may have a little piece that I want to fix. New things, I'd love to come and chat with you about these things and have your research, and I call you brainiacs, your research and developers figure things out for me.
Yeah. Good. One final brief question as we close. You get a lot of people are looking at our technology, looking at our company. I'm sure they're asking you-
Tons
Tell me about Evolv. Tell me about their products." What are the snapshot descriptions, or what do you convey to them?
Well, I would tell them, I always say to anybody who tries to get my business, I get calls every day, is to listen to the customer. Everyone feels special. Everyone knows that their industry, their building, their school, museum is unique. To listen to that. When I tell customers, I tell people that I've gone and say Evolv, the people at Evolv, the leadership, I could sit and have conversations for hours with them, and share what you need, and be able to actually work through those challenges as opposed to them telling me what I need. There's a big difference for me. It's similar to the lack of compassion at the school that you mentioned. There is a partnership feeling, and I always say it's like a relationship you have to build. I won't go in head first.
Someone's going to call me and tell me what I need. I stop them and say they don't know my world. They don't understand the challenges. Let me share with you first. I think that that doesn't happen often in sales, and that's my pet peeve. They will never get my business. Even if the product is great, I have to look past it and say, "Let me share what our profession is and what I need." I think that your company don't lose sight of that because that's probably something that I think a lot of people really embrace that I've spoken to.
Well, thank you. Thank you for the work you're doing.
You're welcome
to keep The Met and New York safe, for your confidence in us, and for sharing with us your experience today. Thank you.
Thank you. You're welcome.
Anytime you bring a new technology into a facility like ours, you're concerned about is it going to work as we had demoed it? It was really the technology-based and access and speed of the equipment and the customer experience that drove our decision. The technology of Evolv has worked swimmingly. Equipment's been very reliable, and we're very happy on where we are right now.
Please welcome Chris Kutsor, Chief Financial Officer.
Good morning. Thanks for being here. I'm Chris Kutsor, Chief Financial Officer of Evolv Technologies. I've been with the company a little bit more than a year. That follows about a 30-year career in global tech. I can say without a doubt that the past year with Evolv has been a tremendously energizing experience so far. I'm pleased to share with you today our five-year view of our financial model and plans. You've heard a lot about it today. I want to put that into context of our business model, the unit economics that underpin that business model. I'll talk about certainly our prioritization of capital allocation and how that lands with our target operating model over the next five years.
It's important I start with a brief Q1 update and talk as well about the shape of our 2026 revenue, because there were a number of changes that we've made that impacts revenue in different ways. Understanding that context is important for as you think about our growth rates going forward. We started off with a very strong Q1. Growth metrics and margins across the board were healthy. The revenue growth of 45% that you see here had the benefit, which we've talked about in prior earnings, that I want to make sure everybody understand, especially our new investors. That included a change in how we fulfilled our hardware for purchase subscription models. What we did was we brought that revenue back in-house, that used to be provided directly by our contract manufacturer direct to our customer.
To a customer, no real change in economics, but to Evolv, at the second half of last year, in July of 2025, we brought that revenue back in-house. That brought with it more revenue, more cash flow, more gross profit dollars, albeit at a lower gross margin because we were not just taking the revenue, but we were taking the cost of that hardware for that one-time purchase in-house as well. Keep that in mind as we think about 2026 and how it helped Q1 of 2026, but was not there for the prior year compare in Q1 of 2025. The other thing is I want to reaffirm our 2026 guidance. We said before, and we continue to expect 20%-23% revenue growth with adjusted EBITDA margins in the high single digits.
I do want to point out that is inclusive of some incremental investments that you've heard us talk about earlier today, and that will keep us on our guide inclusive of those incremental investments. This is a reference slide probably for later, but I want to summarize, there are three variables that affect revenue, and I'll hit on them just briefly because it is not new information. As I mentioned before, there's the direct fulfillment of hardware portion of our purchase subscription units, where again, it's a step up in revenue that will continue going forward. That again, was implemented in the second half of 2025 and continuing. The other thing that impacted the second half of 2025, which was we secured and delivered the largest contract in the history of the company to one of our large education customers.
In doing so, that customer chose to purchase the hardware direct from us, and as I said, that brought with it significant one-time product revenue for that very large contract. The other thing we did in the second half of 2025 was we announced a pricing change. Now, that pricing change won't take effect impacting our financials until the second half of 2026. But that pricing change that we made was we lowered the one-time hardware or the product revenue for the direct fulfillment of hardware to our customers. We offset that reduction in hardware with an increase to the software and services or recurring portion of the contract. So no net change to the customer. But for every similar unit that we sell, effective in the second half of 2026, we'll be taking approximately 20% less one-time product revenue, but we'll be gaining 20% more recurring revenue.
That's a trade-off that we are pleased to make for the long-term benefit of the company. When you put it all together, this is the shape of our 2026 revenue. Because of some of the dynamics that I just described, the year-over-year compare is a little bit distorted. We think in a good way because we're going to be driving more recurring revenue going forward. Make no mistake about it, we expect H2 unit growth to be up more than 25%. Let me say that again. The second half of 2026 unit growth will be up more than 25%, but you won't see that reflected in our revenue profile because of the three variables that I just mentioned before. Specifically for every contract that we sell through that contract direct purchase motion, we will take 20% less hardware one-time revenue, but 20% more recurring revenue.
Let me zoom out a little bit and talk about some of the fundamentals of our business, which you've heard a little bit about today. We contract with our customers over four-year initial non-cancelable contracts. At the end of those 4 years, we typically offer customers the chance to renew those contracts for two years, and they would keep their existing equipment in place. The alternative is, as you've heard Regina and others talk about upgrading their systems to our next generation. If they make an upgrade, we would sign them to a new four-year contract. Initial investment, renew for two years keeping that equipment, or upgrade to new equipment with a new four-year contract. We like those four-year long-term contracts for obvious reasons, provides durability and predictability for the business. The revenue that we take over those four years is primarily taken in a ratable fashion.
That gives us predictability and visibility to our financial forecasts and expectations. We bill annually in advance to our customers. That's a healthy cash flow dynamic that we like, and we certainly have a growing install base of these long-term contracts. We want to make it easy for them to renew and extend those contracts, and that helps with our land and expand of our growing and recurring revenue base. I want to get into unit economics a little bit as well, because I think it's really important to understand the economic drivers of this recurring business model, because it's compelling. We'll start with simple pricing. Assume the end price to a customer is around $100,000, give or take, for that four-year subscription. Then you think about the way we're selling to that end customer, the configuration. Are they buying a single lane or a dual lane Evolv Express?
What vertical is it in? There's different pricing depending on the vertical and the setup and the structure, of course. You put that through those variables, and you end up with the net price to Evolv of an ARPU, as we'll refer to it, average revenue per unit over that four-year timeframe of a $65,000-$80,000 price range. If you keep that in mind for modeling, it'll inform it here in a few slides as well. The other thing I wanted to do was walk us through an illustrative unit economic example of the two subscription models that we offer, the two ways the customers contract with us. The first on the left-hand side is a pure subscription contract. In that case, the customer owns nothing.
We provide over those four years, the entirety of the hardware, the software to run it and upgrade, and the services needed to keep the system running when necessary. The right side is our purchase plus subscription model, where the customer prefers to buy the hardware and own it for lots of reasons, but that also comes with the four-year subscription of software and services attached to that hardware. If you think of the long-term economics of these two models, they're very similar. They do differ by the shape and the timing. If you look at the bottom left-hand side of pure subscription, you can see the revenue recognition there is ratable. It's simply the four-year ARPU divided by four, and that's your revenue spread evenly over that four-year cycle. If you think of the cash flow for that pure subscription, it turns positive early in year two.
Remember, we're billing annually in advance, but we're financing that equipment for the customer. If you compare that to the purchase plus subscription on the right-hand side, looking at the bottom right chart, you can see the revenue recognition has more upfront revenue in year one, where we're taking the revenue associated with that hardware purchase that the customer prefers, plus the four-year software and services subscription that accompanies it. From a cash flow perspective, that purchase motion is cash flow pretty much immediately from day one, depending on how quickly we collect that upfront invoice versus paying our contract manufacturer, but is very good for cash flow. The last thing I want to talk about is the adjusted gross margins between these two models. Let me be clear what adjusted gross margin means.
Adjusted means we are excluding the very small amount of share-based compensation for our team members that are in cost of goods sold. It does include and is fully burdened with depreciation and software amortization and every other cost to deliver that unit to our customers. In those adjusted gross margins, you can see from a pure subscription, it's more than 70% over each of those four years. If the customer renews for two years, like many of ours do, it would be 70% continuing. If you compare that to the purchase plus subscription, the adjusted gross margins start out lower at around 40%. The reason for that is because we take the entirety of the cost of that unit in year one, in addition to the software and services cost that continue.
What that means, each year that goes by, for a purchase plus subscription model, the right-hand side, the gross margin cumulatively improves, because all that's left to deliver in years two, three, four, all the way through seven, because we have a seven-year useful life on these units. That gross margin is near 80+% for that software and services margin on the remainder of that useful life. All of that leads to a very attractive and healthy view of our remaining performance obligation. John touched on it earlier. It's a really important concept. The remaining performance obligation is the value of future contracted revenue that we have simply left to deliver, but it's under contract. At the end of Q1 2026, the value of our RPO was $299 million. That's almost 170% of the full year revenue outlook we have for this year.
The assumed adjusted gross margin within that RPO of $299 million is a very healthy 66%. Said differently, if we don't sell another unit and just let this RPO flow through over time, we're going to get $299 million in revenue and approximately 66% adjusted gross margin from that remaining contracted revenue. One other point that's important, we began shipping the second generation of our Express units in Q4 of 2024. When we started doing that, it came with the benefit of about a 40% lower cost of goods sold profile compared to its predecessor, Gen 1. For every new contract we have today, we deploy new units, those are Gen 2 units with a 40% improvement in cost of goods sold.
RPO, every day that goes forward, we're putting in a new Gen 2 and replacing an older Gen 1 with a much higher cost profile. I think that's really encouraging as we think ahead as this is going to continue to grow, and we expect remaining performance obligation to accelerate in growth from here. One of the key reasons it's going to accelerate in growth from here is some of those pricing and fulfillment changes that I just mentioned a few minutes ago, where we're trading some one-time product revenue for more recurring revenue that's going to compound more and more over time. Last modeling question or last modeling slide for now, I think. I also wanted to make sure, because we get this question a lot, how do I model a full year revenue? What are the puts and takes?
These are the basics. Again, it's a leave behind slide. It'll be available for everybody afterwards. Key assumptions you need to make to model a year. How many new units are we going to deploy? What's the mix of them between the two contract vehicles and ways we fulfill? At what ARPU? If you use the assumptions there at the top, I've built a model here to share that happens to land about in the middle of our outlook guidance. There are many models that can get you there, and I have no intention of updating this slide with guidance in the future, just to be clear. This is one of many ways to get to the same answer, but I think it should help you understand some of the drivers of the business.
When we entered the year January 1st, 2026, we brought in recurring revenue, our ARR balance of $120.5 million. We're going to capture that revenue on day one, if we don't sell another unit the rest of the year. Start there with your ARR balance at the beginning of the year. Of course, you need to add, well, how many new units am I going to deploy? For pure subscription, let's assume it's 45% of the volume. That new subscription revenue is that four-year ARPU of $70,000 we're assuming here, divided by four. That's simple. You have to say, well, I'm going to sell some in the first half of the year, and I'm going to sell some in the second half of the year because the revenue's recognized monthly over that year.
A proxy to use is six months, because you're going to sell some in the first half, some in the second half, use six months as a proxy. Likewise, let's think about the new product revenue that we're going to get from the purchase plus subscription model I described a few minutes ago. You have to take the one-time revenue that's associated with the customer buying that hardware from the beginning. When you do that, you'll want to take today, it's about 38% that's attributed to that product one-time revenue out of the entire ARPU. That'll get you to the $35 million there in the middle of the page for that hardware one-time product revenue for those types of contracts.
You layer on, again, the software and services associated with those units, that'll give you the service revenue accompanying that part of the contract fulfillment. Lastly, we've got other revenue. Other revenue are things like accessories, things like short-term rentals, it includes any term you might be expecting to that ARR from the beginning of the year or changing in the price of renewals when customers do that. It's a small number, but important. You add that all up, you happen to land in the middle of our guidance range. I hope this is useful for those in the room and the new investors that are trying to figure out how to put this all together. As I mentioned, our recurring revenue, our install base, our customers for life, you've heard us talk about that throughout the day. That is really important.
Customer retention, we think the most important way to measure is two metrics, net unit retention and net revenue retention. The definition is here, but simply put, we look at our cohort of customers in a year ago period, we take those same customers in today's period, we compare the units, we compare the revenue that that same cohort of customers is providing. We're pleased to share that as of today, I think John mentioned it earlier as well, that's more than 100% retention across units and revenue. Now, it is important to note we're very early in the renewal cycle. We really just started shipping in volume about four years ago. We're in the hundreds of units of data sample.
We will have more to say with more description later in the year as that sample size grows, because we're getting more and more each quarter that are coming up for renewal. However, we are pleased with what we're seeing so far. One other interesting way to look at our install base and serving our customers is the expansion part of our land and expand strategy and execution. We've got about 1,300 customers in our install base. Of those 1,300 customers, about 32% of them have expanded with us over time. If you look at the bottom left-hand chart, you can see they've expanded with us across all of our verticals in a healthy and diversified way.
That's a good signal to us that we are pleasing our customers in various ways in all of our verticals. Maybe one other part that is really compelling, I think, is the top-right box. What that tells us is of the 32% of those 1,300 customers who have expanded their initial investment with us, about a third of them have expanded three times or more. Again, that's a really strong signal, we believe, that tells us customers are choosing to invest at the beginning of the relationship, they're continuing to expand on that investment with more units in more doorways and in more ways as we've served them over their life cycle. Putting the growth you've heard us talk about and the investments we're going to make into perspective is certainly important. We wanted to share our capital allocation framework with you today.
As you might expect after hearing all of my predecessors speak, that organic growth will include both selling and marketing investment, as well as R&D investment to help protect the moat that we already have and expand it further and expand our product offerings. We intend to do so with a disciplined balance sheet. That means, when we talk about the target operating model between now and 2031, we expect to need no further debt capacity than what the company has access to today. We will keep an eye open, as John mentioned, to accretive and opportunistic M&A. Of course, if that opportunity presents itself, it may have its own debt or equity financing requirements, but that will stand on its own merits and business case on its own.
The target model that we've been talking about throughout today is an organic plan that, again, does not require any additional debt capacity beyond what we have. Finally, we certainly intend to manage shareholder dilution thoughtfully and responsibly. What does this mean? I want to put that target operating model into a little bit more perspective with some details. The investments that you've been hearing us talk about in selling and marketing and R&D is an incremental $20 million over the next two years. We expect that incremental investment of $20 million to grow beyond that as the business continues to grow and scale from there. We expect that that incremental investment will yield for us an incremental $250 million in revenue over that five-year period than we otherwise would have earned without that investment.
Certainly, we expect a return on that investment, and any investment we make is subject to gauging more or less over time. The result, which you've heard about, is a five-year revenue growth CAGR of approximately 25%. Now, approximately means just that. It could be a couple points below in some years, it could be a couple points above in some years. But by 2031, we're expecting approximately 25%. We also expect, certainly it'll vary year by year, but ramp over the long term with higher revenue, all else being equal, in the later years as our ARR model compounds more over time. Likewise, our adjusted EBITDA margins is expected to achieve 25% or more by 2031. We also expect those adjusted EBITDA margins to expand each year annually as we grow year-over-year profitably.
Like the revenue profile, we expect adjusted EBITDA margins to also ramp faster in the later years as our business compounds with that growth. Simply put, what does it mean? We expect to triple the size of the business organically over the next five years with the Rule of 50. As John mentioned, the Rule of 50 means if we have the opportunity to invest more, we will to grow that top line faster. Adjusted EBITDA margins may be a little lighter. On the inverse, if we're not getting the returns that we think, we will scale back on the investment where responsibly and where it makes sense, and we should expect more on the bottom line to keep us within that Rule of 50 by 2031. Let me leave you with just a few thoughts. The company is in good shape.
We're ready to take the next step in growth. We expect to do so as a leader in weapons detection technology, underpinned by a very strong unit economics and recurring revenue model to drive and compound that growth and profitability over the next five years. We expect to do so responsibly, thoughtfully, and win more and more of this very, very large and under-penetrated market. We expect to do so by prioritizing and delivering long-term profitable growth for our shareholders. Thank you. John will come up with a few closing comments.
Thank you for coming here to Evolv, to our headquarters, and to listen to our story and our outlook for the future. I'm going to keep it brief with a few comments. You heard today how we created this category. We created the category and the total available market that came with that category. The opportunity in front is still largely greenfield. It's there for us to go get. You heard from Owais and Sean how differentiating concealed weapons at the pace of life with all your possessions on you or in your bag is hard. It's an immensely difficult challenge. We've been at it for 13 years with multiple iterations of product to try to make that experience as good as possible, and we're going to continue to do that, continue to build that moat, because hard problems, they create durable companies. We're convicted in our strategy.
We believe in this TAM. We believe in the difference that we can make in the world, we're going to put the gas pedal down on investments in a responsible way, as hopefully this management team has gained credibility with you that we can do. That means increasing our sales and marketing investment to get better coverage and get that story and our mission to as many customers around the world as we can. That means leveraging what we learned with introducing new products and new form factors like eXpedite to expand our portfolio and be an increasing multi-product company beyond the two form factors that we offer today.
Relative to that and to our products, I'm pleased to announce that we just received Safety Act designation from the Department of Homeland Security for eXpedite, which means now that both of our technologies are officially recognized as qualified anti-terrorism technology underneath the Safety Act. What does that mean? That means that 25% compound annual growth rate, tripling the business, growing to $500+ million, while being responsible and operating as a Rule of 50 company. We're building a future where most public buildings that prohibit weapons are going to be screened by Evolv. Thank you. Thank you very much for joining us today, and I hope you enjoy lunch.