For decades, the analytical work at the heart of digital investigations has been constrained by bottlenecks. Evidence comes in. It goes to an expert. The investigator waits. When findings come back, they review what someone else prepared and try to piece together their case from static reports and all too often limited context.  

That model can no longer stand. Public safety agencies are being asked to do more with less. Budgets are under pressure, recruiting and retaining investigators is harder than ever, and the volume of digital evidence in every case continues to grow.   

According to Cellebrite’s 2026 Industry Trends Report, 78% of investigators say better tools would ease caseload pressure. Customer design partners are proving them right. In a counter-terrorism case, an investigator achieved in 3 minutes what would have taken 3 analysts 2 weeks. In an overdose death investigation, an investigator mapped an entire drug supply chain in 5-10 minutes, work that would have consumed a full day. Today, Cellebrite is removing the bottleneck and putting AI-powered insight directly into investigators’ hands, moving them from reviewers of what others prepared to actively working their cases live. 

What Is Cellebrite AI and Why It’s Different from General-Purpose AI Both 

Cellebrite Genesis and Cellebrite Guardian Investigate  are powered by Cellebrite AI, a purpose-built intelligence layer powering our solutions, that goes far beyond the capabilities of a general-purpose AI tool. Cellebrite’s end-to-end portfolio has been leveraging AI for over a decade. With more than 20 years of digital investigation leadership and tens of millions of investigations during same period, Cellebrite AI will deliver the same court-proven robustness that customers rely on today. It works directly on the digital evidence that investigators synthesize: mobile phone extractions, call detail records, documents, messages, images, video and more. Every output links to the applicable evidentiary artifact, chain of custody is preserved, and the investigator stays in control. 

Cellebrite AI is purpose-built, drawing on proprietary access and decoding capabilities, more than $100 million in annual R&D investment, and alignment with the EU AI Act and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). It is built on a proven foundation: court-trusted reports, deep investigative and forensic expertise, and strict evidentiary standards. And it inherits the trust of thousands of agencies, millions of legally sanctioned or warrant-based investigations and a global network of customers who partner with us to help design products to deliver high-value and unique outcomes specific to law enforcement 

Cellebrite Genesis: Agentic AI for Individual Investigators and Small Units 

Cellebrite Genesis is a new, standalone solution that puts agentic AI directly in investigators’ hands through an intuitive, conversation-like experience any analyst can master in minutes. Genesis doesn’t just answer investigators’ questions. It also prompts them with ways to keep moving the investigation forward. Genesis can be deployed on its own or alongside other Cellebrite solutions, built on a secure, scalable SaaS architecture with the integrations, security and governance that agencies at any scale require. It delivers insights and leads with the precision, investigative rigor and public safety-grade guardrails that only come from a Cellebrite-powered investigative workflow, across critical case types including cold cases, narcotics, human trafficking, crimes against children and many more. Customer design partners report reducing investigation time from days down to minutes. 

 “After a targeted terrorist attack, we gained early access to Genesis and immediately began pushing its boundaries. We identified evidence and generated leads of a quality and rate that we would otherwise have expected from dozens of dedicated, highly experienced analysts.” said a counter-terrorism detective from an Australian police agency with early access to Genesis. “We’ve used it to do things that surprised us, including generating critical new information from uploaded intelligence profiles, which changed the calculus and timeline entirely, achieving outcomes beyond what we believed possible.” 

Figure 1.1: Cellebrite Genesis automatically correlates a timeline of key events, geographic movements, photographs and communications from a device extraction, surfacing connections across evidence types that would take an analyst hours to piece together manually. 

Guardian Investigate: AI-Powered Case Management for Entire Organizations 

 Guardian is Cellebrite’s established investigative platform, trusted by agencies worldwide for secure evidence management, forensic and investigation analysis and management. Guardian Investigate extends that platform with a collaborative, AI-powered investigative management layer. Where Genesis empowers individual investigators, Guardian Investigate empowers investigators and the entire organization, including other departments and agencies depending on the scope of the investigation. It is the first solution built for all key stakeholders collaborating on a case from investigators, analysts, and task force teams, as well as agency leadership seeking visibility and status across many investigations where there is zero margin for error. It breaks down walls between departments and agencies, enabling cross-jurisdictional collaboration in real time. Investigators don’t have to wait for devices to come back from the lab. Evidence collected in Guardian flows directly into Investigate as it becomes available, enabling case review, task management, collaboration and narrative building while maintaining a secure chain of custody. 

“Investigate bridges the gap by enabling investigators to manage the entire investigation within Guardian. Directionally, the path Cellebrite is taking with Investigate is going to be fantastic for case outcomes,” said Kent Nielsen, Digital Forensics Investigator for the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office in Texas, who is currently piloting the solution with an active investigation. 

In an Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) investigation, an analyst was able to assemble an operational intelligence briefing package in just minutes, a process that traditionally would have taken weeks. Typically, this task requires painstakingly combing through a vast amount of evidence, documents, and images to produce actionable intelligence. Leveraging Investigate, the analyst rapidly created a pre-operational intelligence report that directly supported search warrant execution planning. This package included a comprehensive subject background, threat assessment, and tactical considerations—all crucial for ensuring officer safety and successful evidence preservation.  

Figure 1.2: An investigator asks “What are the relations between Subject A and B?” in plain language. Investigate responds with a sourced timeline linking device data, documents, images and call detail records, with every finding traceable to the original evidence artifact in the right panel. 

How Genesis and Guardian Investigate Work Together Across an Agency  

Every agency operates differently. Genesis gives an individual investigator or small unit immediate AI-powered analysis of digital evidence on a specific case, from the first hour. Guardian Investigate gives the organization the operational backbone to manage that case and dozens of others across teams, jurisdictions and timelines. An investigator might use Genesis to rapidly analyze a phone extraction and surface leads in minutes, then those findings inform the broader case inside Guardian Investigate, where the team collaborates, command staff maintains oversight and the prosecution narrative gets built. Genesis makes the individual faster. Guardian Investigate keeps the organization coordinated. Both are powered by Cellebrite AI. Agencies can start with either based on their most immediate need, and when deployed together, the combined capability compounds.  

AI That Augments Investigators — Not Replaces Them 

Cellebrite AI handles the volume: summarizing millions of messages, normalizing CDRs across carriers, surfacing patterns across dozens of evidence sources and searching multilingually across data types that could take human analysts weeks or months and still leave room that somebody will overlook a potentially valuable clue. Investigators apply professional judgment and contextual reasoning that is further informed by their experience in case strategy and courtroom testimony. Clear guardrails prevent overreach. Every output is grounded in source evidence and fully traceable. The result is not fewer people. It is investigators freed to work their cases live and examiners freed to focus on higher-complexity forensic work. Both can maximize their productivity while the bottleneck is removed. The expertise stays and scales. 

Built for Compliance: NIST, SOC 2, CJIS, and the EU AI Act  

Cellebrite AI is designed with transparency, traceability and human oversight at every layer. Genesis delivers insights on demand with no customer data retained or stored, aligned to standards including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) framework and Service Organization Control 2 (SOC 2) compliance, and will ultimately align with global frameworks including the EU AI Act. Guardian Investigate is Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) compliant.  Both platforms are architected to scale across defense, intelligence and enterprise investigations such as corporate fraud, IP theft and workplace misconduct among others. Speed matters. Trust matters more. 

Cellebrite’s position in this market is structurally different from horizontal software where AI can simply sit on top. Our solutions begin with proprietary, hardware-enabled access to encrypted devices, produce court-proven investigative data formats that do not exist elsewhere and operate within chain-of-custody and evidentiary integrity requirements that make our technology part of an agency’s critical workflow and infrastructure, not a layer that can be swapped out. 

Cellebrite is not delivering a general-purpose AI feature. Our AI is purpose-built for investigations, built from two decades of real casework, real evidence and real courtroom outcomes. That kind of foundation cannot be replicated by startups that have never set foot inside an investigation. We’re delivering the future of digital investigations. 

Availability: Cellebrite Genesis is now open for Early Access for state and local government customers in North America, with additional markets to follow. Guardian Investigate is generally available now.  

FAQs  

Q: What is Cellebrite AI? A: Cellebrite AI is a purpose-built intelligence layer powering Cellebrite’s investigative solutions, including Genesis and Guardian Investigate. Unlike general-purpose AI tools, it is built specifically for digital investigations — trained on decades of real casework, designed to preserve chain of custody, and aligned with compliance frameworks including NIST, SOC 2, CJIS, and the EU AI Act. 

Q: What is the difference between Cellebrite Genesis and Guardian Investigate? A: Cellebrite Genesis is a standalone agentic AI solution for individual investigators or small units needing immediate, case-level analysis of digital evidence. Guardian Investigate is an organization-wide, collaborative AI-powered investigative management platform enabling cross-department and cross-jurisdictional coordination. Both are powered by Cellebrite AI and can be deployed independently or together. 

 What is agentic AI in digital investigations? Agentic AI refers to AI that actively assists investigators by not just answering questions but prompting next steps, surfacing leads, and working through evidence autonomously within defined guardrails. In digital investigations, agentic AI like Cellebrite Genesis synthesizes mobile extractions, call detail records, documents, and multimedia — then guides investigators toward the most actionable findings. 

Is Cellebrite AI compliant with CJIS and other law enforcement standards?  Yes. Guardian Investigate is CJIS compliant. Cellebrite Genesis adheres to the NIST AI Risk Management Framework and SOC 2 compliance, with alignment to the EU AI Act in progress. Both solutions are built with chain-of-custody integrity, human oversight requirements, and zero customer data retention during analysis. 

 How does Cellebrite Genesis reduce investigation time? Based on early access deployments, Cellebrite Genesis has reduced tasks that previously required teams of analysts working for weeks to a matter of minutes. In a counter-terrorism case, an investigator achieved in 3 minutes what would have taken 3 analysts 2 weeks. In an overdose death investigation, mapping a full drug supply chain took 5–10 minutes instead of a full day. 

How do I get access to Cellebrite Genesis? Cellebrite Genesis is currently in Early Access for state and local government customers in North America, with additional markets to follow.  

Author Bio: 

David Gee is Chief Marketing Officer at Cellebrite, where he leads global marketing strategy for the company’s AI-powered digital investigative and intelligence solutions. With deep experience at the intersection of public safety technology and go-to-market execution, David works closely with law enforcement agencies, defense organizations, and enterprise customers worldwide.

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