Stirling tech firm Vidai launches ‘tiny’ AI tool to stop sensitive data leaks
Nagu Gopalakrishnan, Co-Founder and CPTO of Vidai UK
Homegrown Scottish startup tackles global privacy concerns with ultra-compact software that runs locally on standard office hardware.
Scottish artificial intelligence startup Vidai UK has launched a lightweight AI Model designed to solve one of the tech sector’s biggest security headaches: keeping sensitive customer data safe and strictly within company boundaries.
Named Stirling-Minimo PII, the open-weight model automatically identifies personal details including names, addresses, and financial account numbers so they can be redacted before information ever leaves an organisation’s internal network.
While most AI guardrail tools rely on energy-intensive cloud server networks, Vidai built its custom architecture from scratch so it sits directly in the path of live data. At just 10 million parameters and a file size of roughly 40MB, the single portable file is small enough to run on an ordinary office CPU or edge device without specialist hardware.
By checking data inside local infrastructure, organisations can comply with strict GDPR and data residency requirements, avoid the extra network hop, and eliminate the security risks of sending raw data to external providers.
Despite its tiny footprint, the Scottish-developed model matches the accuracy of industry giants. Stirling-Minimo PII scored 0.904 on the PIIMB English benchmark and is officially ranked third out of 36 global entries on its public leaderboard, alongside models with more than 100 times as many parameters.
Nagu Gopalakrishnan, Co-Founder and CPTO of Vidai UK, said, “Sending sensitive information to an external cloud service just to check if it contains private data completely defeats the purpose of privacy protection. We built Stirling-Minimo in Scotland to give organisations absolute authority over their own data footprint. ScotlandStirling is proving to be an exceptional hub for deep-tech innovation, proving that world-class, privacy-first AI can be built right here rather than imported from Silicon Valley.”
Dr Priya Mothilal Bhagavathy, Co-Founder of Vidai UK, said, “The industry trend has favoured making AI models bigger and more expensive to run. We took the opposite approach, researching a custom architecture from first principles to compress advanced detection capability into a tiny, portable file. It delivers high-precision data protection without the massive energy or hardware cost.”
Former Scottish Government Minister for Business Richard Lochhead, who oversaw the publication of Scotland’s latest AI Strategy, commented: “The future of enterprise AI hinges on trust, safety, and data sovereignty, and Scotland-based Vidai is being recognised as a leader in tackling the privacy problem head-on. Building a world-class model that keeps sensitive business, health, and financial data firmly within a company’s own walls is what’s needed for successful AI adoption, and this is a proud milestone for Scottish engineering.”
Ruari Fairbairns, Founder of Founder Engine, said, “Most business leaders I speak with want to adopt AI, but stall on one fundamental question: where does our customer data actually go? A model this small that answers that question directly inside a company’s existing setup removes a major barrier to adoption. It’s brilliant to see this calibre of technical engineering coming out of Scotland.”
James Varga, Founding Partner of Somai, said: “Every organisation is now trying to put its own knowledge to work with AI, and the honest blocker is that the most valuable context is also the most sensitive. Most of the AI leakage I see today isn’t malicious; it’s staff pasting customer data into tools because nothing is stopping it at the boundary. A redaction model small enough to run on the hardware a business already owns moves privacy from a policy document to a control in the data path. That matters more than raw scale, and it’s good to see that kind of engineering judgement coming out of Scotland.”
Stirling-Minimo PII is the first model in Vidai’s Stirling-Minimo series, with dedicated versions for healthcare, financial technology (fintech), and cyber-defence against prompt-injection attacks already built and scheduled for release shortly.
The model is available immediately on Hugging Face at huggingface.co/VidaiUK/stirling-minimo-pii-10m under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license (free for non-commercial use). Commercial enterprise licensing is available directly from Vidai UK.
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Zumo and Quantum Chain React to the Q-Day threat
Zumo and Quantum Chain join forces to help UK financial institutions resist future quantum attacks
- The two companies have come together to create new infrastructure solutions built on NIST-standardised post-quantum algorithms, which will boost cryptographic agility across the UK’s developing digital assets sector.
- The partnership has been conceived amid concerns that Q-Day is drawing closer – and that PQC migration offers only a partial defence.
Crypto-as-a-service platform Zumo has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Quantum Chain, a quantum-resilient blockchain and infrastructure platform, with the companies uniting to help safeguard the UK’s developing digital assets sector against the spectre of future quantum threats.
There are growing fears regarding the imminence of Cryptographically Relevant Quantum Computers (CRQCs) that will soon be able to break standard public-key cryptography that underpins blockchain security, asset ownership, and institutional custody.
In response, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is advising financial institutions to ensure they are completely migrated to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) by 2035. Most estimates point to the 2030s for ‘Q-Day’, which will herald the arrival of CRQCs powerful enough to break public-key encryption standards using algorithms like Shor’s algorithm.
However, with research from Google indicating that CRQCs capable of shattering traditional encryption could become a reality as early as 2029, the window to act is shrinking rapidly.
There are also widespread worries about “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later (HNDL)” attacks, in which state-sponsored actors and cybercriminals are believed to be intercepting and storing encrypted financial data today with the aim of decrypting it once a CRQC exists.
According to a recent survey by Thales, HNDL is now the most pressing quantum concern for security professionals, cited by 61% of respondents, while there are also major concerns regarding Quantum-Enabled AI, which would dramatically expand the destructive capability of CRQCs.
“In my view, Q-Day isn’t a specific day when a CRQC is created but rather a range of time when they become commercialised, weaponised, and publicised,” says Max Denega, Founder and CEO, Quantum Chain, who has a background in counter-terror operations and a decade in the financial industry.
“The likelihood is that when attacks begin, they will be purposefully suppressed and misreported to stave off public chaos. So the concern is Q-Day will actually be when the damage is too great and too frequent to stop the media from spreading the word.”
Fitting more than just new locks
For the fast-moving digital assets ecosystem, achieving cryptographic agility – which is the ability to quickly swap out vulnerable code blocks, namely encryptions, without destroying network functionality – has therefore become a priority.
The timely collaboration brings together Zumo’s compliant digital asset infrastructure, and experience supporting emerging enterprise and institutional propositions, with Quantum Chain’s quantum-resilient blockchain infrastructure. Under the terms of the MoU, this strategic integration aims to support quantum-safe digital currency and asset management across central banks, banks, and regulated financial institutions.
Quantum Chain provides built-in solutions designed to help financial institutions defend themselves against both AI-led and quantum-era cyber threats.
The company’s network architecture has been engineered from day-1 to counter the rapid evolution of machine-speed attacks. It uses newer encryption methods aligned to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and can be quickly swapped out if any element is compromised. Quantum Chain also supports public-permissioned protocols to maintain institutional privacy and retail distribution.
Commenting on the partnership, Zumo’s Founder and CEO Nick Jones says:
“While today’s encryption can be considered a lock that would take ordinary computers thousands of years to pick, a powerful CRQC could allow cybercriminals and other bad actors to pick it in hours.”
“I recently spoke with someone who oversees cryptography for a major UK bank and suffice it to say he is extremely concerned. As banks and wealth managers ramp up their adoption of blockchain-based infrastructure for payments, deposits, and digital assets, our partnership with Quantum Chain will focus on ensuring that Zumo’s services remain secure and resilient in the face of these emerging threats.”
“It reflects a much more forward-looking approach to infrastructure, embedding more robust security measures into systems that are being built for long-term use.”
Quantum Chain’s Founder and CEO Max Denega adds:
“I don’t wholly agree with PQC migration as it is sold today, which has become the leading sales narrative of the large consultancies. It locks banks into cumbersome contracts for inventories, a Cryptographic Bill of Materials, and eventually updated encryptions that will simply be a copy-paste of open-sourced jurisdictional solutions. This is an over-expensive delivery that is frankly rude to financial institutions. This works for the vendor, not for the bank.”
“A PQC migration does not actually change underlying systems or architecture, so adds an enterprise-wide burden, rather than combining solutions to save the bank time and cost. For example, a PQC migration does not support a bank’s effort to move towards on-chain finance, meaning the bank and the existing blockchain vendors must transition with incredible risk. Quantum Chain brings you onto a post-quantum blockchain infrastructure now – allowing you to focus on the application layer and product expansion while others fight to catch up.”
“With Quantum and AI progressing so fast, we’re heading towards a new normal in which there could be constant cyclical updates of encryptions needed as their obsoletion rate speeds up. This makes cryptographic agility absolutely vital – and this is one of many benefits our collaboration with Zumo provides.”
The two companies will now work together to support the development of an ecosystem in which institutions can deploy future-proofed digital assets and blockchain-based financial services.
This work will encompass potential applications across private networks, tokenised deposits, payments, and institutional digital assets – including the exploration of a quantum-resistant GBP stablecoin, subject to regulatory requirements.
£200,000 awarded to four fintechs building responsible and explainable AI tools for financial services
Four fintech companies have each been awarded £50,000 to develop technology that helps financial and professional services firms adopt artificial intelligence responsibly, while meeting regulatory expectations.
The £200,000 grant funding was awarded through the Financial Regulation Innovation Lab (FRIL), a collaboration between FinTech Scotland and the University of Strathclyde. Since launching in 2023, FRIL has supported 120 fintechs and awarded a total of £1.35 million in grants to 27 companies.
The awardees were selected after a six-week Innovation Challenge where 14 participants worked directly with 13 global financial and professional services firms — Atos, Baillie Gifford, Barclays, BlackRock, CMS, Equifax, EY, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, M&G, NatWest, PwC and Sopra Steria — shaping their innovations around real, current industry challenges in this space. The Financial Conduct Authority also took part throughout, giving early access to a regulatory perspective.
The Innovation Challenge concluded with a Showcase Day where the fintechs pitched to a panel of industry judges. Participants, including those awarded funding, will now continue to work with industry partners to test and validate their solutions, with the aim of accelerating market fit and moving from pilot to commercial adoption faster.
The four awardees are:
Amplified Global
Amplified Global helps financial services firms measure, improve, and prove the clarity of legal and regulatory communications with AI. Firms get consistent, repeatable results they can evidence to a regulator — cutting the cost of assurance and removing a barrier to deploying AI at scale. The FCA used Amplifi’s intelligibility benchmark in its July 2026 review of pre-sale investment disclosures. The £50,000 grant will fund the development of a beta benchmarking platform for industry, where any firm can score its documents against peer data and benchmark it against that. The company plans to open a Scotland base and create skilled jobs.
NestEgg
NestEgg helps credit unions lend to more people, providing a decision engine, loan matching and referral platform that identify applicants a narrower credit score might decline. The £50,000 will fund staffing, infrastructure and the legal groundwork for informed consent as NestEgg builds LENS, a tool to test AI-driven lending decisions for bias. The aim is more income for credit unions from approvals they would otherwise turn away, and more borrowers in Scotland and across the UK able to access credit affordably.
Verifoxx
Verifoxx builds trust infrastructure for data and AI: defining what systems are authorised to do, enabling privacy-preserving execution, and independently assessing whether they behaved as trusted agents, within one coherent architecture. The £50,000 will fund a new product feature and validation with an industry partner.
Finspector
Finspector helps regulated firms keep financial promotions and marketing compliant at scale, automating review and monitoring across text, images, video, websites and social media. Potential issues are identified in real time, before or shortly after publication, with audit-ready evidence generated automatically — reducing breach risk and the operational burden of manual review. The £50,000 funding will support Finspector’s commercialisation and go-to-market strategy, while also helping to create new roles and strengthen their presence in Scotland.
Phil Clements, Chief Executive Officer at Finspector, said:
“This funding will enable us to expand Finspector’s regulatory research hub in Scotland, creating high-value opportunities across AI, data science and RegTech, alongside internship and graduate placements with the University of Strathclyde. Scotland is an important part of Finspector’s long-term growth plans, and we’re excited to build our presence in the region while supporting local regulated firms to navigate an increasingly digital and fast-changing regulatory landscape.”
Clare Reid, Strategic Innovation Director at FinTech Scotland, commented: “Bringing fintechs, leading firms and the FCA together to solve industry problems in meeting the requirements of regulation has proven a successful way to boost innovation. For the four awardees, the funding will accelerate responsible and explainable AI solutions that make a real difference to the businesses adopting them, their customers and the wider economy.”
Professor Eleanor Shaw, Associate Principal at the University of Strathclyde, added: “The tangible impact of what FRIL participants are building goes beyond the technology. The awarded companies are growing Scotland’s capability in AI, creating roles in AI, data science and RegTech, including opportunities for graduates. This builds on the success of the FRIL programme to date.”
Find out more about the FRIL responsible AI cohort
Find out more about the Financial Regulation Innovation Lab (FRIL)
Digital Trust Centre Report calls on Scotland to lead the shift to digital assets and tokenisation
The Digital Trust Centre, Scotland’s Centre of Excellence for Digital Trust and Distributed Ledger Technology, has published Digital Finance 2030 Strategy – a briefing setting out why Scotland should act now to lead as global finance moves to digital assets and tokenisation.
Tokenisation is reshaping how money, shares, bonds and fund units are traded and settled. The report describes it as a generational upgrade to the financial system, and one with particular significance for Scotland. The country’s financial-services sector manages around £500 billion in assets and employs 151,000 people, with a strong concentration in the fund and operations roles this transition will change most.
The stakes are significant. The report estimates that acting on the opportunity could be worth £3-5 billion a year to the Scottish economy, as part of a UK-wide prize of up to £53 billion of additional output by 2035. With the UK’s new regulatory regime for digital assets going live on 25 October 2027, the report argues that the window to build a clear, evidenced Scottish position is now.
Scotland starts from a position of strength: distributed-ledger research at three of its leading universities, a growing FinTech cluster, the Digital Assets (Scotland) Act 2026, and firms already moving – Edinburgh’s Baillie Gifford recently launched the UK’s first natively tokenised investment fund. The report sets out eight practical actions for government, agencies and industry, from a Digital Assets Policy Statement to a tokenisation readiness assessment of Scotland’s largest firms.
Crucially, the report frames this as a job for the whole ecosystem. Prepared with contributions from across industry and Scottish Enterprise, and drawing on the Centre’s work with universities, FinTech Scotland and the public sector, it makes the case that progress will come from collaboration rather than any single organisation acting alone.
Peter Ferry, CEO of the Digital Trust Centre and Visiting Associate Professor at Edinburgh Napier University, said: “Scotland’s financial services industry stands at a watershed. A tide in global finance is turning on tokenisation, and those who move with it will prosper. We have the people, expertise, great firms and a proud history of financial innovation. What we need now is resolve, and the coordination to act as one, to secure jobs and build the businesses of the future here in Scotland.”
Alongside the report, the Centre is launching its third Innovation Challenge, focused on tokenisation and digital assets, with Challenge Partners Morgan Stanley and Zumo. The Challenge invites companies to develop and test solutions against a real industry problem, with grant funding for successful teams, development support and access to the Centre’s industry partners. Pre-registration is open now, ahead of the formal launch in early October.
Trust is the foundation of a digital economy – and the Digital Trust Centre exists to help Scotland build, prove and scale it. Digital Finance 2030 Strategy is a call for Scotland to do exactly that in one of the fastest-moving areas of finance.
Read more about the report and register your interest in the Innovation Challenge.
Boost for Scottish fintech cluster as Tesco Insurance & Money Services partners with FinTech Scotland
FinTech Scotland, the cluster management organisation, today announced a new strategic partnership with Tesco Insurance & Money Services to accelerate innovation and collaboration across Scotland’s growing fintech ecosystem.
Tesco Insurance and Money Services is a major UK provider offering a full portfolio of insurance products, including car, home, pet, life and travel, as well as gift cards and travel money. In the UK, it leads the gift card market, ranks second in travel money, and operates the third-largest ATM network with more than 3,400 machines across more than 3,000 Tesco and One Stop stores.
By joining FinTech Scotland’s 37-strong network of Strategic Partners, which includes leading financial services firms, academia, technology providers and public sector organisations, Tesco Insurance and Money Services will support initiatives that drive innovation, encourage collaboration and build cross-regional partnerships across the fintech ecosystem.
This collaboration will connect the business with leading innovators to help shape future customer propositions. It aligns with the company’s digital strategy to deliver greater customer value by continuing to strengthen its technology capabilities, following the sale of its banking operations to Barclays UK in late 2024.
The partnership also underscores Tesco Insurance and Money Service’s commitment to Scotland. The business serves more than two million insurance customers UK-wide and maintains business operations in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Commenting on this partnership, Aleks Tomczyk, Chief Executive, FinTech Scotland, said: “We’re delighted to welcome Tesco Insurance and Money Services as a Strategic Partner. Their active participation in the community will help Tesco IMS innovate and bring even better services to customers. Tesco IMS’s specific customer focus and commitment to innovation will also add real value to our existing stakeholders.
The collaboration will further strengthen Scotland’s fintech ecosystem and support regional growth, reinforcing Scotland’s position as one of Europe’s most dynamic and collaborative fintech clusters.”
Darren Coomer, Chief Information Officer at Tesco Insurance and Money Services, said: “We’re entering an exciting new chapter for Tesco Insurance and Money Services, and joining FinTech Scotland is a natural next step for our business. It will help us tap into leading innovators, build new partnerships and keep delivering simple, rewarding and trusted services for customers. As we continue to invest in the technology and partnerships that will support our culture growth, we’re proud to play our part in Scotland’s fintech success, supporting growth and job creation.”