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.
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. Scotland 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.”
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.”
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