As mothers and technology leaders, Jaclyn Kilani and Catherine Isbell watched AI become part of their children's everyday lives and realized something was missing: there was no layer designed to supervise how AI behaved around children.
These powerful systems were built for general audiences, while parents were left to navigate questions of safety, age appropriateness, academic integrity, and oversight on their own. That gap became impossible to ignore, and instead of waiting for someone else to solve it, they decided to build the solution they wished existed for their own families.
They bootstrapped SafeMindsAI from an idea into a working beta, creating a system designed to evaluate AI interactions in real time before a response reaches a child. Today, SafeMindsAI is working with early beta families to validate trust, engagement, and retention while preparing its first school pilots.
But their vision extends beyond building a product for today's families: they are building the governance layer that allows children to benefit from AI while giving parents and institutions meaningful control.
They believe AI will become part of childhood whether we are ready for it or not, and that the systems protecting children should be built alongside the technology, not after it. If SafeMindsAI succeeds, it will help define the standard for how AI interacts with the next generation.
Along the way, the company has earned recognition and support from programs including NVIDIA Inception and other technology and founder programs.