James Ren is one of four co-founders of Verkada, based in San Mateo, California. The others are Filip Kaliszan, Benjamin Bercovitz and Hans Robertson.
Ren studied at Stanford University. There he worked with Kaliszan and Bercovitz on CourseRank, a platform for class data. Chegg acquired CourseRank in 2010.
The team founded Verkada in 2016. Its first cameras went into an Equinox gym in Beverly Hills in 2017.
Verkada raised $100 million at a $5.8 billion valuation in December 2025. It reported about 30,000 customers at the end of 2025.