Milestone Systems Posts 10% Revenue Growth in 2025, Bets Big on Intelligent Video

Milestone Systems grew net revenue 10% to approximately $348 million (DKK 2.2 billion) in 2025, the Copenhagen-based video technology company announced Wednesday, capping what CEO Jeppe Frandsen described as a year of significant transformation as the company broadened its portfolio well beyond its video management software (VMS) roots.

The results mark more than a doubling of net revenue over the past five years. Operating income came in at approximately $16.1 million (DKK 104 million), down slightly from approximately $16.6 million (DKK 107 million) in 2024, while research and development spending climbed to approximately $98.3 million (DKK 633 million) — representing 28.8% of net revenue, up from 24.8% the prior year. The company attributed the increased R&D spend to its acquisitions and continued investment in next-generation technology.

In the announcement, CFO Lars Larsen pointed to the formal integration of BriefCam and Arcules, the acquisition of anonymization technology provider brighter AI and the launch of Project Hafnia as the defining moves of the year, saying the achievements position the company to continuously innovate and invest in next-generation software.

XProtect still driving the bus

In an exclusive interview, Frandsen told SecurityInfowatch the five-year revenue run has been fueled primarily by Milestone's core XProtect video management software, even as the company has assembled a broader suite of products.

"Over the last five years, we have moved from a one-product company with XProtect into a multiple-product company today," Frandsen said, citing BriefCam for analytics, Arcules for cloud video surveillance as a service, brighter AI for anonymization and Project Hafnia. "But if we look at both 2025 and the last five years, XProtect is driving a big part of our growth."

He said demand for XProtect has remained strong across all three of Milestone's major regions — the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific. On a percentage-growth basis, however, the cloud VSaaS business through Arcules has been the standout performer in 2025 — though Frandsen noted that business remains relatively small in absolute terms. "From a percentage point of view, the VSaaS business has been growing pretty well," he said, adding that the North American market has been a particular driver of that segment.

Pulling the portfolio together

Milestone formally completed the integration of BriefCam and Arcules into its business during 2025. brighter AI, the anonymization startup the company acquired last year, is being managed differently — operating as a standalone entity to preserve what Frandsen called its entrepreneurial spirit, while beginning to leverage Milestone's go-to-market structure and broader capabilities.

Frandsen said the expanded lineup gives the company's channel partners and end customers something it previously could not offer: A much broader set of products and services within a single ecosystem.

"We have a much better opportunity to serve our channel and our customers today because we have a much broader portfolio," he said. "We can, to a higher degree, offer some kind of one-stop shopping within our ecosystem. That is something that is going to help us in the coming years."

He described the VMS, analytics, cloud VSaaS and anonymization businesses as fitting together closely, with Hafnia as a connective thread running across the portfolio.

The video data problem, and Project Hafnia

Among the year's headline initiatives was the launch of Project Hafnia, developed in collaboration with NVIDIA, which Milestone describes as the world's first compliant video data library for training AI models. Pilot programs were launched with the city of Genoa, Italy and Dubuque, Iowa.

Frandsen framed Hafnia as a response to a gap in the AI development ecosystem. While large language models have access to extensive text data resources, he said, no equivalent exists for video.

"If we look at video data, we don't really see today that there are data libraries that offer the right level of quality in the data, the right level of compliance, and where both developers and customers have access to this in a secure and compliant way," he said.

The model Milestone has built around Hafnia is structured around licensing agreements with the organizations that own the underlying data, with privacy and compliance guarantees baked in. Developers who want to train AI models on the library access the data within the library environment. They do not extract it.

"The data stays in the library, but you get access to it, and when you're finished, you step out again," Frandsen said.

He acknowledged the initiative is still in early stages, but pointed to Milestone's installed base of XProtect deployments worldwide as a potential foundation for expanding the library's scale and diversity over time.

"Together with our partners and with the end customers, we really believe that we have a fantastic opportunity to expand this library and offer a lot of quality data to the right users," he said.

Vision-language models and the XProtect App platform

As part of the NVIDIA collaboration, Milestone launched a vision-language model and a Video Summarization tool for XProtect, powered by NVIDIA Cosmos Reason. The tool uses AI to rapidly convert video content into text summaries, with potential applications in emergency response and traffic management.

Frandsen said security teams are operating under mounting pressure, managing high volumes of footage, dealing with false alarms and facing growing compliance requirements. He added the company is responding with what it is calling the XProtect App Platform, set to be formally unveiled at ISC West.

"This is basically a kind of app store platform set up in connection with our XProtect platform," he said. "If you as a security team use our VMS as a foundation, then through these apps, you have access to a lot of new features that can make you much more efficient in your daily work."

The platform is designed to carry applications developed both by Milestone and by its technology partners, with end users and integrators able to browse, evaluate and deploy what fits their operation.

Frandsen pointed to a deployment in Puerto Rico — carried out in partnership with security integrator Genesys and AI analytics provider Actuate — as an early proof point. The project, which involved monitoring government buildings and high-traffic areas, resulted in a reported 62% improvement in operational efficiency for the security teams involved.

Three trends shaping 2026

Looking ahead, Frandsen identified three priorities he said will define the direction of intelligent video in 2026 and beyond.

The first is the shift from capturing and storing video to actively understanding it and using it predictively.

"We as an industry are moving from capturing and storing data to now really being able to understand it — and based on that understanding, being able to predict what is going to happen in the future," he said. Project Hafnia, in his framing, is central to enabling that shift.

The second is what he described as the enduring value of the open platform model. With technology moving as quickly as it is, Frandsen said no single vendor can realistically offer everything a customer needs. "I think that would be probably mission impossible," he said. Milestone's open platform approach, and the forthcoming app store, are designed to let technology partners contribute alongside the company's own development — while giving end users the flexibility to avoid being locked into any single system.

The third is responsible AI. "Everybody wants to use AI, but when we talk about it from a security point of view, it has to be compliant," Frandsen said. "We don't only want to deliver AI capabilities of high quality, but we also want to do it in a responsible way."