Coalition growth
This year in review highlights what we achieved together and how we’re building toward 2026.
We welcomed twelve new members, our largest annual increase yet, bringing our coalition to 59 companies committed to making the online world safer for children. Our membership became more diverse across sectors and regions with new social media platforms, creator services, AI companies and a financial institution joining from North America, Europe, and Asia.
Member collaboration
In 2025, more than 300 child safety experts spent nearly 1,000 hours collaborating through 30 different Tech Coalition working groups, sharing insights and advancing solutions to some of the toughest online safety challenges.
That collaboration continued in person at TC Connect in San Francisco, where more than 200 industry experts came together to strengthen relationships, exchange ideas and accelerate collective action to protect kids online.
Lantern impact
2025 was an impactful year for Lantern, industry’s flagship cross-platform signal-sharing program to detect and disrupt OCSEA. Five new companies joined, including 3 financial institutions, following a successful pilot showing the value of sharing signals related to financially motivated OCSEA. Lantern is now open to eligible U.S.-based financial institutions.
Participation deepened, with more companies sharing and ingesting signals than ever. We continued scaling the program to address emerging threats, including AI-generated abuse, exploitation in gaming, and sadistic online extremism.
To date, companies have shared over 1 million signals, and we are just getting started. Next year Lantern will continue driving faster detection, more targeted action, and a safer online world for kids.
Tech innovation
Collaboration on practical, scalable technology to improve child safety remains at the core of our work. In 2025:
- Our Korean-language grooming classifier—built from over 4 million labeled lines and 50,000 conversations—entered testing, showing promising early results. Close collaboration with an APAC-based member helped capture linguistic and cultural nuances, bringing us closer to a tool that can better protect children worldwide.
- Our Video Hash Interoperability Project (VHIP) also made progress, making it easier for companies to match against NCMEC’s full CSAM database. Since launch, more than 784,000 videos have been hashed, including 435,000 in 2025 alone, helping companies detect and remove abusive video content faster.
Pathways and Elevate
Pathways, our free program for non-member companies, continued to provide platforms — from startups to global enterprises — access to expertise and guidance on addressing OCSEA. In 2025, 67 companies participated, using tailored support and training to strengthen child safety practices.
We released 5 new resources on topics ranging from financial sextortion to building law enforcement response teams, hosted 2 fireside chats on CSAM tech and Trust & Safety careers, and launched our first Elevate pilot to support companies preparing for Tech Coalition membership.
Events and engagements
We convened diverse stakeholders throughout the year to build shared understanding and coordinate responses to emerging harms. Major multi-stakeholder events in Singapore and New York focused on regional trends in the Asia-Pacific and measuring cross-sector progress against OCSEA.
Targeted briefings and workshops addressed high-impact issues including AI-generated abuse, financial sextortion, and effective law enforcement engagement. These conversations helped inform new resources, research investments, and tech innovation pilots.
Research
Through the Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund — which has invested over $2.75 million — we continued supporting action-oriented research to combat OCSEA. Grantees partnered with member companies to answer practical questions, from designing effective deterrence messaging, to understanding evolving generative AI risks, to strengthening public awareness campaigns for parental tools. These efforts, along with ongoing research findings, are building a stronger evidence base to guide industry action.
We also hosted our third annual Tech Coalition Safe Online Research Fund Convening, bringing industry leaders and researchers together in Singapore to explore how insights from APAC-based projects can inform safer, more thoughtful tech design.
What’s next for 2026
Building on this year’s progress, priorities for 2026 include:
- Asia-Pacific expansion: Growing membership and tailoring initiatives to regional needs in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
- Deeper member collaboration: Continuing trusted working groups that help members respond quickly to emerging OCSEA threats.
- Scaling Lantern: Expanding participation, including additional U.S.-based financial institutions, and addressing new forms of abuse.
- Targeted research: Investing $350,000 in new independent studies on emerging harms, including $100,000 from TikTok focused on youth engagement and safety.
- Pathways and Elevate: Launching a second Elevate pilot, expanding resources and trainings for non-member companies, supporting PhotoDNA sublicensing, and increasing access to expert guidance.
- Cross-sector engagement: Convening stakeholders around emerging risks and shared measures of impact.
We will also continue sharing insights from industry collaboration, including the release of our 2026 Annual Report and Lantern Transparency Report in April.
From our 2025 milestones, we move into 2026 with stronger collaboration, smarter solutions, and a continued commitment to protecting children online.
