When trying to find a vulnerability in Apple iPhones or Android devices, many cybersecurity researchers now use a tool from Florida-based startup Corellium. Rather than risk breaking a physical device when they hack it, which they’d subsequently have to replace, they can create a virtual version of the phone in Corellium.

Now, Cellebrite, one of the largest providers of phone forensics tools, has acquired Corellium for $200 million, a major merger that promises to give law enforcement unprecedented tooling for extracting data from seized electronics.

The deal is a coup for founder and CTO Chris Wade, who in the last five years alone settled a major copyright lawsuit from Apple and received a pardon from President Trump for his role in providing proxy servers to a pair of spammers who were convicted of cybercrimes back in the mid-2000s. Wade avoided prison time, doing undercover work for the Department of Justice.

“The FBI and Department of Justice leaned on him to help secure the United States, that's a pretty bold testimonial.”

Now, Wade will start a new chapter as the chief technology officer at Cellebrite, which is listed on the Nasdaq with a $4 billion market cap and posted over $400 million in revenue in 2024. The $200 million deal will consist of $150 million in cash, $20 million of restricted stock, and another $30 million in cash if certain, unspecified performance milestones are hit over the next two years.

“We've been a customer of Corellium for many years,” said Cellebrite CEO Tom Hogan. As soon as he learned Wade was looking for a buyer earlier this year, Cellebrite “jumped on that immediately and pursued being their ultimate home.”

Wade told Forbes he was excited to work for a company whose technology is used on 1.5 million law enforcement investigations every year. “That’s a phenomenal statistic,” Wade said. “Imagine the real world impact of that. That was something I wanted to be involved with.”

Cellebrite and Corellium make for a good fit. Cellebrite offers a range of tools that come with the promise of accessing data on phones and PCs even when they’re locked; its largest order from a federal customer, per public contracting records, is Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), with a $9.6 million deal in August last year. However, with devices like the iPhone continually adding layers of security, Cellebrite and rivals like Atlanta-based Grayshift have to find operating system flaws that can be exploited to allow them to bypass such barriers and get at data.

Corellium’s software makes finding those weaknesses easier by allowing the user to quickly spin up any make or model of a device within a PC app and test a given hack. For law enforcement, that means a cheaper and more efficient way to find exploits that could get them crucial evidence in an investigation. Corellium’s software is also used by all manner of defensive and offensive cyber researchers probing software for vulnerabilities. While being sold direct into police agencies, Corellium will continue to be developed and sold to private customers like banking giant Santander and defense contractor L3Harris.

The merged business also plans to debut a new beta product called Mirror that enables police to make a virtual version of a seized device and all the data that’s on it. Wade thinks it’ll help prosecutors show a jury exactly what’s on a criminal’s phone, presenting more compelling evidence compared to screenshots from technical-looking forensic tools.

There’s another benefit to Corellium’s virtual devices. Sometimes forensics tools like Cellebrite’s aren’t compatible with certain mobile apps, meaning they won’t retrieve data from them; Mirror will allow cops to look through those apps, says Wade, effectively giving them more complete access to what’s on the device.

Even before the deal, Cellebrite and Corellium had already been collaborating on an AI-powered service to detect government-made spyware on cellphones. The AI will look at a replicated version of a phone’s operating system and identify “deviations or any execution of foreign code on the device,” Wade said.

“This is something that's never been done before,” he said. “It’ll make it much easier to track down these kinds of state sponsored malware attacks.”

While Wade’s connections to Trump and the DOJ might turn heads, Cellebrite CEO Hogan said he’s not concerned about the optics. “The fact that the United States government, the FBI and Department of Justice leaned on him to help secure the United States, that's a pretty bold testimonial,” Hogan added.