The LLM, called CaLICO, will be built over the next twelve months, with aims to pursue international expansion.

Textgain is an AI spin-off from the University of Antwerp in Belgium, originating in the university’s Computational Linguistics & Psycholinguistics Research Center.

The company focuses on applying AI technologies to address societal challenges, such as detecting hate speech, disinformation and violent extremism.

Guy De Pauw, chief executive officer and co-founder at Textgain, said: “Large language models, especially commercial ones, refuse to process toxic language. This makes it almost impossible to use them to process hate speech.

“We are now building a language model from scratch that can process this type of content – but without generating it. That’s what makes us different.”