On Miami streets, patrol cars are starting to do more than respond to calls. They are collecting data, spotting patterns, and feeding real-time insight back to the people tasked with keeping the city running.
That shift helps explain why Ekin Smart City Technology, a global public safety and smart city company with nearly 30 years of experience, is making Miami a cornerstone of its U.S. expansion.
Earlier this month, Ekin announced a $25 million investment to build out full-scale U.S. operations in 2026, including localized engineering, manufacturing, and more than 100 new hires nationwide. Miami and Atlanta will anchor the expansion, with additional markets planned for Southern California and New York City by late 2026.
The company, which was founded in Turkey, is already active locally, with deployments underway in Coral Gables and with the City of Miami Police Department. Those early projects are part of a broader push to simplify how cities manage public safety and municipal operations, which are often spread across disconnected systems.
“The U.S. public safety and smart city landscape is highly fragmented,” Alex Hamlin, president of Ekin Public Safety USA, said in a company press release. “Agencies are forced to manage multiple disconnected systems that don’t communicate or scale. Ekin solves that.”
Hamlin told Refresh Miami that the company’s local presence is growing fast. “We have about 10 people on the team based in Miami currently, many of whom work remotely supporting customers across the country.”
That number is set to climb. “Over the next 12 months, we anticipate adding 30+ roles in Miami as part of our U.S. expansion,” Hamlin added. “These positions will span sales, business development, marketing, operations, and public safety-aligned roles, supporting both regional growth and national deployments. Miami will continue to serve as a key operational hub for our U.S. business as we scale.”
A major focus of that growth is Ekin’s Patrol G2 platform, an AI-enabled smart lightbar that brings together law enforcement, traffic management, parking enforcement, code compliance, and municipal analytics in a single system. Instead of layering new tools onto patrol cars, Ekin aims to reduce complexity while expanding what cities can do with the data they already collect.
That approach has resonated with local leadership. “Ekin’s cutting edge technology opens the door to a level of insight we’ve never had from our patrol units,” Miami Police Chief Manuel Morales said in a statement. “Turning everyday activity into usable, real-time intelligence has the potential to transform how we protect our community.”
For founder and CEO Akif Ekin, the expansion is about building staying power in the U.S.
“We’ve supported U.S. agencies for years through partners, but now we are establishing a direct footprint in public safety. This investment is just the beginning,” he said. As Miami becomes a larger part of that footprint, the city may help shape how smart public safety systems are built and scaled across the country.
Pictured above: From left, Alex Hamlin, president of Ekin Public Safety USA, Ekin Smart City Technology founder and CEO Akif Ekin, and Chief Strategy Officer Malik Ekin.
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