Why we built this
Crypto crime scales with software. Investigation still scales with people. Sapphire Trace exists to close that gap.
The problem
Illicit cryptocurrency activity moves at machine speed, thanks to automated laundering chains, mixers, cross-chain hops. The tools investigators use to fight it are effective but human-intensive: they demand trained analysts, long graph-tracing sessions, and expertise most agencies don't have enough of. The result is a capacity gap: cases that go unworked not because the evidence isn't on-chain, but because there aren't enough specialists to read it.
Our approach
Sapphire Trace is built AI-native from the ground up, on three convictions:
- Automation over headcount. Autonomous agents should do the mechanical work of an investigation — the tracing, clustering, cross-referencing — so a small team can carry a caseload that used to need a department.
- Simplicity over training. A police officer on their first crypto case should get useful, safe answers on day one. The complexity belongs inside the platform, not in the user's head.
- Glass box over black box. An investigation product's output ends up in front of courts and regulators. Every conclusion must open up to show its evidence: traceable to its sources, honest about its coverage, explicit about its uncertainty.
Where we are
The platform is live and the models are trained: real investigators running real cases, with 21 chains scanned live. Under it sits a full-chain ownership-clustering store, an open-source intelligence corpus, a graph-neural-network risk engine — 99.9% recall of illicit transactions in testing, with precision hardening in progress — and an autonomous fund tracer, validated end-to-end against the Colonial Pipeline case. All of it reachable through one question box.
Founder
Max has spent more than twenty years at the intersection of cybersecurity, law enforcement and intelligence. He served over ten years as an intelligence analyst and covert internet investigator, including seven with London's Metropolitan Police, working in Scotland Yard's SCD6 money-laundering unit, investigating organised criminal groups and giving evidence in crown court. As Assistant Director of the ICC's Commercial Crime Services he ran investigations into commercial crime, fraud and serious organised crime.
He went on to become a cybersecurity consultant to GCHQ, where he was the subject-matter expert on the dark web and cryptocurrencies, worked on operations disrupting terrorism and organised crime, and was a key part of the agency's cyber school, training government and private-sector teams in ethical hacking, open-source intelligence, dark web and cryptocurrencies.
Max then joined Immersive Labs as one of its earliest senior leaders, helping build it into one of the UK's fastest-growing cybersecurity companies. As VP of Cyber and Product he led its team of cyber experts through hypergrowth, building enterprise SaaS used by hundreds of the world's largest organisations and driving the company's shift to AI-native product development.
Sapphire Trace brings those two careers together: investigator-grade rigour, delivered as AI-native, enterprise-grade software.
Working live cases in law enforcement, law, finance, regulation, or compliance? We'd like to hear from you.