Subvolts take Peregrine uses AI to connect existing city data for public safety, prioritizing privacy and sovereignty. Sep 1, 2026 - Developers
- Learn how AI agents can be integrated to solve complex, real-world problems by connecting disparate data sources.
- Business
- Understand a unique business model for public safety tech that leverages existing data and prioritizes privacy and city control.
This is a solid interview with founders of a company applying AI in a novel way to public safety challenges.
Making Cities Awesome: Peregrine’s Nick Noone & Ben Rudolph
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From Subvolts
Summary and analysis by Subvolts editorial, AI-assisted.
This episode of Sequoia Capital's Training Data podcast features Peregrine co-founders Nick Noone and Ben Rudolph discussing their public safety technology company. Peregrine connects existing city data rather than collecting new information. The discussion covers their privacy-first approach, data sovereignty, and AI applications like a cold case agent and threat identification.
This episode talks about a company that helps cities use the information they already have to improve safety, like police and fire services. They use smart computer programs, like AI agents, to find connections in data that help solve crimes or prevent problems, without needing new cameras or sensors.
This episode offers insight into a unique business model in public safety tech, focusing on data integration over collection. It's for founders, city officials, and AI practitioners interested in practical AI deployment and data privacy. The use of AI agents for complex tasks like cold case analysis and incident root-causing aligns with current frontier lab efforts in developing more capable, autonomous AI systems for real-world problem-solving.
- HostSequoia Capital
- GuestNick NooneCo-founder, Peregrine
- GuestBen RudolphCo-founder, Peregrine
- Episode Title: Making Cities Awesome: Peregrine’s Nick Noone & Ben Rudolph
- Show: Training Data (an official AI show)
- Hosts: Sequoia Capital
- Length: 52 minutes
- Peregrine's Model: Connects existing city data, no new sensors or data collection.
- Cities Served: More than 400 cities and communities globally.
Most public safety technology companies grow by collecting more data. Peregrine inverted the model: no sensors, no new data, a business built on connecting the data and information cities already own. Co-founders Nick Noone and Ben Rudolph received more than two dozen no's before San Pablo PD let them in the door in February 2018. Today, Peregrine powers law enforcement, emergency medical services, fire and rescue, and other services in more than 400 cities and communities globally. Nick and Ben explain their north star for data sovereignty, and discuss how Peregrine's philosophy and privacy-first approach to data access and ownership preserves individual privacy and cities' sovereignty. They walk through how AI and long-horizon agents are being deployed: a cold case agent that reproduced an exoneration detectives had reached by hand, a Wisconsin county that placed a suspect using cell records buried in 300GB of evidence, identifying threats to a synagogue, root-causing an escalation in weather-related incidents, and more.
00:00 Introduction
02:07 What Forward Deployed Engineering Means
03:58 What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong
05:23 UNHCR, Dimagi And Downstream Data Problems
08:25 Why Cities, Why Safety
10:45 Two Dozen Nos And San Pablo PD
14:19 Building Through Defund The Police
18:16 The Inversion Of The Collection Model
21:20 Data Ownership And Governance
22:57 From Nice Search To Deep Analysis
29:59 Agents Writing The Integrations
31:45 The Cold Case Agent
35:02 The Anti-Network-Effect Proposition
38:40 Facial Recognition And Hard Decisions
40:48 Technology For The Underdogs
42:54 Trusting The Individual Contributor
48:50 Ten Thousand Cities
- long-horizon agents
- Nick Noone and Ben Rudolph
- AI programs designed to plan and execute complex, multi-step tasks over extended periods.
- data sovereignty
- Nick Noone and Ben Rudolph
- The concept that data is subject to the laws and governance structures of the nation or region where it is collected or processed.
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Questions people ask
- How does Peregrine differ from other public safety tech companies?
- Peregrine inverts the typical model by connecting data cities already own, instead of collecting new sensor data.
- What are some examples of Peregrine's AI applications?
- They deploy AI agents for tasks like solving cold cases, locating suspects using cell records, identifying threats, and analyzing weather-related incidents.
Page generated Oct 19, 2026. Summaries are Subvolts' own; the audio, artwork and notes belong to Sequoia Capital.