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Grayshift

American mobile device forensics company

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 9, 2026
Entity authorityQ82481868
Source-derived summary

Grayshift is an American mobile device forensics company which makes a device named GrayKey to crack iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. In 2023, it merged with the Canadian firm Magnet Forensics.

History

Grayshift was co-founded by David Miles, Braden Thomas, Justin Fisher, and Sean Larsson. The company is funded by private investors PeakEquity Partners and C&B Capital. As of 2023, it was majority controlled by investment firm Thoma Bravo.

Grayshift was founded in 2016, and as of 2018 was a privately held company based in Atlanta, Georgia, with fewer than 50 employees.

In 2023, it was announced that Grayshift would merge with the Canadian firm Magnet Forensics, following the latter's acquisition for $1.35 billion by investment firm Thoma Bravo, which also owned the majority of Grayshift at the time. The merger was completed later the same year.

GrayKey

In 2017, rumors started to circulate that Grayshift had created a device able to unlock iPhones, following the Apple–FBI encryption dispute where US law enforcement agencies unsuccessfully tried to compel Apple to write software that would enable the government bypass these devices' security and unlock the phones.

The GrayKey product has been used by the FBI and U.S., British and Canadian local police forces.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Grayshift” is american mobile device forensics company. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Grayshift, American and mobile, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2023, 2016, 2018, 2017—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Grayshift, American and mobile is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american mobile device forensics company” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q82481868. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2023, 2016, 2018 and 2017.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Grayshift”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Grayshift primary sources, Grayshift archive and Grayshift research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Grayshift”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Grayshift” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.