Press Release: New targeted funding to tackle technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse

Safe Online announced on July 9, 2026, that it is investing 8 million dollars in AI-driven solutions to address the growing and increasingly complex threat of technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse, naming 30 grantees from its latest targeted funding round. Projects include expanding INHOPE's Project SOAR to strengthen the global infrastructure that enables hotlines, industry and law enforcement agencies to share data and respond more effectively to online child sexual abuse, and scaling Kindred Tech's AI-powered tools that help investigators identify victims and accelerate child exploitation investigations. Over the past decade, Safe Online has invested more than 100 million dollars in efforts to end online child sexual exploitation and abuse, supporting more than 180 projects across more than 100 countries.

Investigator tools that accelerate victim identification and improve data sharing between agencies are critical for law enforcement response, but they operate downstream of the abuse—after imagery has been created, shared and reported. Guardii's anti-CSAM detection module operates upstream, at the point where an adult attempts to coerce a child into producing imagery or where a user attempts to share existing material through a direct-message channel. By flagging the conversation as it escalates—detecting the pattern of coercion, the language of grooming, the moment the request is made—the system surfaces the child in crisis to a parent, school or platform authority before the imagery is created or transmitted. This is prevention at the point of contact: not faster identification of victims after the abuse, but interception of the abusive conversation before the child becomes a victim in the first instance.