SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 13, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TRM Labs today launched Ardence, an artificial intelligence (AI) investigation platform that gives investigators more capacity to uncover the networks behind modern crimes and act against them. As criminals use AI to increase the volume and pace of their activity, Ardence equips crimefighters to scale their response by accelerating each stage of the investigative lifecycle: gathering relevant intelligence across dozens of sources, making sense of it, and turning it into action.
Criminal use of AI rose 40% year over year, according to TRM's 2026 AI-in-Crime Adoption Index, and losses reported to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reached $21 billion in 2025, approximately five times the 2020 total.
As AI enables criminals to operate faster and at greater scale, investigators need tools that help them keep pace without compromising the rigor their work demands. 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 purpose-built for high-stakes investigations and missions. It uses AI to apply expert-developed investigative methods across dozens of intelligence sources, helping teams pursue more leads while preserving the supporting evidence for review. Investigators direct the work, assess the findings, and determine where to act.
"Investigators don't lack the skills to build a case. But criminals’ use of AI is creating a capacity gap that hiring alone can't close. We built Ardence to take manual work off their plates, so the same team can work more cases without giving up the rigor and precision their work demands," said Esteban Castaño, CEO and co-founder of TRM Labs.
Ardence brings intelligence and expert-developed methods into a single, AI-native platform:
Connected intelligence: The Ardence Data Network combines TRM intelligence with specialized providers of corporate, cyber, identity, dark web, sanctions, and financial data, so investigators can search across critical sources in parallel and reach reviewable findings faster.
Expert tradecraft: Ardence applies expert-tested repeatable analytic methods to pursue more lines of inquiry and follow connections further than a team can by hand.
Built for scrutiny: Every finding stays linked to its source material. Reviewers can retrace the methods and human decisions behind a result. Investigators own the conclusion.
Carried into action: The same investigation record supports drafting legal process, asset-freeze requests, and infrastructure takedowns.
Already in use across law enforcement, defense, and private sector organizations, Ardence has helped investigators scale World Cup security, disrupt AI-powered cybercrime services, and take down thousands of scam sites.
The Ardence Data Network launches with partners including AML Ranger, APIVoid by NoVirusThanks, AsiaVerify, BankCheck, Bitquery, Bitsight, CACI DarkBlue, Castellum.AI, Censys, Cloudburst, ComplyAdvantage, Constella, Criminal IP, CYJAX, DarkOwl, Diligencia, District 4 Labs, Exorde Labs, Flashpoint, Fraud Intelligence Limited (FIL), Global Database, GreyNoise, Hudson Rock, Infrawatch, Kaiko, Kharon, Magnet Forensics, Malanta, Minerva, NewsCatcher, OpenCorporates, OpenSanctions, OSINT Industries, Overwatch Data, Parallel, PhishFort, Pipl, PolySwarm, sanctions.io, Scamalytics, ShadowDragon, Shadow Nexus, ReversingLabs, Shodan, Sigma7, Sixtyfour, smooth.sh, SOCRadar, SpyCloud, Team Cymru, TeamT5, Tesseract, ThreatFabric, Torchlight.ai, Vetric, Webamon, Whisper, WhoisXML API, WireScreen, and Xapien.
TRM Labs is the operating system for modern crimefighters, built to detect and disrupt the criminal networks that exploit frontier technologies, including cryptocurrency and AI. Combining proprietary intelligence, AI-native investigations software, and disruption network infrastructure, the platform is built for high-consequence environments where accuracy, auditability, and security are essential. TRM is trusted by 600+ government agencies and financial institutions across 75 countries to counter fraud, scams, cyber crime, child exploitation, money laundering, and sanctions evasion, among other illicit activities. To learn more, visit www.trmlabs.com.
