Over the past three years, we've experienced phenomenal momentum, continuing a 3X annual growth rate to reach $68 million in ARR and achieve a $1.4 billion valuation. With this rapid growth comes an even greater responsibility. Despite the exciting prospects, we recognize the inherent challenges of a commitment to modern safety standards. We've invested tremendous effort into ensuring that our platform remains secure as it scales, because safe AI is about developing and managing AI systems that work in a manner that is beneficial to humanity and encourages the generation of safe content. As the world of AI evolves and our user base multiplies, so must our approach to supporting our community.

PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- At CHAI, our goal has always been to provide an engaging space that empowers users to create and interact with customized chatbots, offering unique and engaging experiences.

Over the past three years, we've experienced phenomenal momentum, continuing a 3X annual growth rate to reach $68 million in ARR and achieve a $1.4 billion valuation. With this rapid growth comes an even greater responsibility. Despite the exciting prospects, we recognize the inherent challenges of a commitment to modern safety standards. We've invested tremendous effort into ensuring that our platform remains secure as it scales, because safe AI is about developing and managing AI systems that work in a manner that is beneficial to humanity and encourages the generation of safe content. As the world of AI evolves and our user base multiplies, so must our approach to supporting our community.

To ensure the highest level of protection, we implement all necessary safety measures to ensure our users do not self-harm and remain fully compliant with global standards. Our protocols reflect the rigorous requirements set by the EU AI Act and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF). Furthermore, we rigorously align our platform with the expert guidelines established by the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP), integrating comprehensive safeguards to protect vulnerable individuals in distress.

Product Safeguards
CHAI aims to build an AI platform that generates content aligned with human values so that it does not cause any risk to users. To achieve this, CHAI deploys a moderation system that filters out any content exhibiting negative properties, allowing our AI to act as a compassionate lifeline for individuals in distress. Building on this foundation, we develop an advanced, real-time suicide and self-harm "classifier" to scan active conversations and flag potential suicidal ideation or scenarios centered on self-harm. Because early detection of unsafe behavior allows for immediate intervention, enabling the activation of safety mechanisms before undesired behavior progresses.

Suicide and self-harm
AI is not a substitute for professional advice or medical care. If someone expresses personal struggles with suicidal or self-harm thoughts, AI should react with care and compassion while pointing users towards human support where possible: to helplines, to mental health professionals, or to trusted friends or family. To make this happen, we use a combination of model training and product interventions.

Operational Transparency and Traceability
The CHAI AI Platform logs user conversational exchanges on private, secure servers. While we conduct rigorous, periodic reviews of these interactions to identify potential risks and detect unsafe practices early, this auditing process is strictly anonymized. Employing privacy protocols akin to HIPAA standards, allowing us to continuously improve platform safety without ever compromising user privacy.

We're making these changes to our platform in light of the evolving landscape around AI. As our community grows at an unprecedented rate, we must ensure our infrastructure scales safely. The successful implementation of the safe AI framework in CHAI indicates the practicality of mitigating potential risks for responsible and ethical use of AI technologies.

These are bold steps for our company, but we believe they are the right thing to do. We want to set a precedent that prioritizes user safety, protecting data, and ensuring that the technology behaves ethically and responsibly. We will continue to collaborate with safety experts and stakeholders to ensure that user safety remains paramount.

Reference: Read more about our comprehensive methodology in our official paper: The Chai Platform's AI Safety Framework. Available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.02979.

Press Contact:

Tom Lu
+1 (626) 594-8966

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SOURCE Chai Research Corp