TRM Labs launches Ardence: an AI-native investigation platform for the age of AI-enabled crime
GFI Software announced on Tuesday that Eloquens AI, its AI email automation platform, is now built directly into GFI KerioConnect — the mail and collaboration server deployed by more than 30,000 organizations. The pitch: an AI email assistant that works inside the server you already own, so getting AI help doesn’t mean moving your mail to someone else’s cloud.
TRM Labs launched Ardence today, an artificial-intelligence investigation platform built to give investigators more capacity to uncover and disrupt the criminal networks behind modern crime. The pitch is simple: criminals are using AI to move faster and at greater scale — so the people chasing them need an AI-native way to keep up.
Fighting AI with an AI-native workflow
Ardence is not a chatbot bolted onto a database. It is an investigation platform that applies expert-developed analytic methods across dozens of intelligence sources in parallel — gathering relevant intelligence, making sense of it, and turning it into action. The target cases: fraud, cybercrime, child exploitation, and terrorism financing.
The company’s argument for why investigators need it is quantitative. According to TRM’s 2026 AI-in-Crime Adoption Index, criminal use of AI rose 40% year over year. Losses reported to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center reached $21 billion in 2025 — roughly five times the 2020 total.
What it is built on
Three pillars, per the launch announcement:
Connected intelligence. The Ardence Data Network combines TRM’s own intelligence with more than 60 specialized partners — corporate, cyber, identity, dark web, sanctions, and financial data — so investigators can search critical sources in parallel. Named partners include Censys, Shodan, Flashpoint, DarkOwl, ComplyAdvantage, SpyCloud, GreyNoise, and Team Cymru.
Expert tradecraft. The platform applies repeatable, expert-tested analytic methods to pursue more lines of inquiry and follow connections further than a team could by hand.
Built for scrutiny. Every finding stays linked to its source material, so reviewers can retrace the methods and human decisions behind a result. The same investigation record supports drafting legal process, asset-freeze requests, and infrastructure takedowns — and “investigators own the conclusion,” the company says.
Already in the field
Ardence is available today, and per TRM it is already in use across law enforcement, defense, and private sector organizations — it has helped investigators scale security operations for the World Cup, disrupt AI-powered cybercrime services, and take down thousands of scam sites.
The launch comes one month earlier than expected: in early September, reporting from Fortune noted TRM planned to publicly announce the platform in November. The acceleration arrives alongside TRM’s own scale-up — an add-on funding round in September doubled its valuation to $2 billion (up from a $70 million Series C at $1 billion in February), with the company expecting to cross $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Per the launch announcement, TRM’s platform is now trusted by more than 600 government agencies and financial institutions across 75 countries.
The context
TRM built its name in blockchain forensics — tracing crypto through ransomware, sanctions evasion, and money laundering — alongside rivals like Chainalysis and Elliptic. Ardence is the company’s biggest step yet beyond crypto, treating AI itself as a growth engine: where investigators once chased on-chain flows, the same tradecraft now targets deepfake-enabled fraud, sextortion, and AI-accelerated scam infrastructure. “Investigators don’t lack the skills to build a case,” said CEO and co-founder Esteban Castaño. “But criminals’ use of AI is creating a capacity gap that skill and hiring alone can’t close.”
The honest caveat TRM itself states: connecting a frontier AI model to data does not, by itself, provide the investigative tradecraft or evidence trail needed to build a case. Ardence is an attempt to supply exactly that layer — and whether courts and compliance teams accept AI-assembled evidence trails is the test that matters next.
Sources: TRM Labs — “TRM Labs Launches Ardence, the AI Investigation Platform that Helps Crimefighters Disrupt AI-Enabled Crime” (October 13, 2026); Crypto Briefing — “TRM Labs doubles valuation to $2 billion as AI business takes off” (reporting from Fortune, September 2026); Crypto Times.