Private AI
Private AI builds Limina, a proprietary context-aware PII/PHI/PCI detection and de-identification platform that runs inside customer infrastructure. It serves regulated enterprises in healthcare, pharma, financial services, and insurance across 8 countries.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2019
- HeadquartersToronto, Canada
- Headcount11–50
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Private AI does
Private AI is a Toronto-based (founded 2019) privacy technology company that builds Limina, a context-aware data de-identification platform identifying, redacting, and replacing personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI), and payment card information (PCI) across text, images, audio, and structured documents. The core technology is a proprietary NLP and machine learning stack with more than six years of focused PII-detection development, supporting 50+ entity types across 52 languages including code-switching and regional variants. The platform deploys as a container inside the customer's VPC or on-premises infrastructure, ensuring data never leaves the buyer's environment, and is positioned for regulated industries including healthcare, pharma, financial services, contact centers, and insurance.
The product processes billions of API calls per month across enterprise production deployments and integrates natively with AWS, Azure, Snowflake, and NVIDIA NeMo. Validation partnerships with Armilla AI (backed by Swiss Re) and AETION support expert determination reports accepted under HIPAA, GDPR, CPRA, APPI, PCI-DSS, and Quebec Law 25. The go-to-market is a hybrid of enterprise field sales and product-led growth: a self-serve trial portal (portal.getlimina.ai) sits alongside direct expert consultation for large regulated-industry deployments. Named enterprise customers include Boehringer Ingelheim, Providence Health, Zurich Insurance, MUFG Bank, Be My Eyes, Semalytix, Rilla, and TNO.
Private AI is a venture-backed private company that has raised approximately $11.5M across a 2020 pre-seed, a $3.15M seed round led by M12 (Microsoft's venture fund) in September 2021, and an $8M Series A led by BDC Capital in November 2022. Leadership consists of co-founder and CEO Patricia Thaine, co-founder and CTO Pieter Luitjens, co-founder Gerald Penn, and COO Paul Burmester. The company operates from Toronto with deployment presence in 8 countries spanning North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.
Private AI firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Private AI
- Legal name
- Private AI
- Website
- https://private-ai.com
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2019
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 11–50 employees
- Short description
- Private AI builds Limina, a proprietary context-aware PII/PHI/PCI detection and de-identification platform that runs inside customer infrastructure. It serves regulated enterprises in healthcare, pharma, financial services, and insurance across 8 countries.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Private AI industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Data Privacy and De-identification Software
- NAICS
- Software Publishers (51321), Software Publishers (5132), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (5182)
- SIC
- Services-Prepackaged Software (7372), Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Privacy-Preserving ML & Data Protection (e.g., federated learning, differential privacy) (HDAAAMAD)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- AI Privacy Engineering & Data Governance (PII, consent, retention) (HDAAAKAB), AI Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) Platforms (HDAAAMAA), De-identification, Tokenization & Privacy-Preserving Data Platforms (HLACAIAK), Privacy-Preserving Data (De-identification, Anonymization, PII Redaction) (HDAAALAG)
Keywords
Where Private AI is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Toronto
- HQ country
- Canada
- HQ region
- North America
Offices1 record
Markets served
Private AI business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Technology or R&D, Personnel, Marketing or Sales, Operations, Infrastructure
Revenue model
- API Subscription with Usage-Based Component: Cloud and on-premises deployment options with API-based access. Usage measured through API calls processed at scale (billions of calls per month across enterprise deployments). Enterprise contracts likely include usage tiers and volume pricing.
- Enterprise Licensing: On-premises container deployment licensed to enterprise customers for use within their VPC or data centers. Multi-year enterprise agreements expected for regulated industry deployments.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | Monthly | Self-serve trial tier available |
Go-to-market motion2 records
Distribution channels3 records
Marketing channels5 records
Private AI product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Private AI sells the Limina platform, a context-aware AI-powered de-identification tool that identifies, redacts, and replaces personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI), and payment card information (PCI) across 50+ entity types in text, images, audio, and documents. The platform deploys as a container inside the customer's VPC or on-premises infrastructure, supports 52 languages including code-switching, and delivers expert determination-ready outputs for HIPAA, GDPR, CPRA, PCI-DSS, APPI, and Law 25 compliance. Customers access the platform via API subscription, self-serve portal trial, or enterprise licensing.
Product overview
Private AI offers Limina, a unified data de-identification platform that provides context-aware PII detection and redaction capabilities. The core product, Limina, identifies, redacts, and replaces personally identifiable information across text, images, audio, and documents. The platform supports 50+ entity types and 52 languages, deploys as a container within the customer's infrastructure, and is designed for regulated industries including healthcare, pharma, finance, contact centers, and insurance. Limina provides three core functions: IDENTIFY (real-time PII/PHI/PCI detection), TRANSFORM (redact, pseudonymize, or generate synthetic data), and COMPLY (expert determination reports for regulatory audits).
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Quantifiable outcome
- 99.5% accuracy on physician conversations for Providence Health
- +4 more outcomes
Companies that use Private AI
Customer profileNamed customers8 records
Segments6 records
Ideal customer profiles4 records
Private AI technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration4 records
AI capability7 records
Feature6 records
Private AI partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Six partnerships are on record, tiered core and supporting.
- Armilla AIcoreIndependent validation partner backed by SwissRe. Armilla AI validates the company's technology for accuracy and reliability, providing third-party credibility for enterprise customers evaluating the platform.
- AETIONcorePartner for expert determination reports in real client deployments. AETION provides regulatory-grade evidence for healthcare and life sciences data compliance, enabling customers to meet HIPAA and FDA requirements.
- AWScoreTechnology integration partnership. Platform plugs into AWS infrastructure, supporting deployment within AWS environments alongside native AWS services.
- AzurecoreTechnology integration partnership. Platform supports deployment within Microsoft Azure environments for enterprise customers using Azure infrastructure.
- SnowflakecoreTechnology integration partnership. Platform integrates with Snowflake for data processing workflows, enabling privacy-preserving data analysis within Snowflake environments.
- NVIDIA NeMosupportingTechnology integration partnership. Platform integrates with NVIDIA NeMo framework for AI model training workflows requiring PII detection and de-identification.
Scale indicators6 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Private AI competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- Microsoft Presidio: Open-source PII detection and de-identification framework from Microsoft. Directly competes with Limina on context-aware entity detection across text and images, and is the default free alternative enterprises benchmark against (explicitly cited in Limina customer testimonials).
- Tonic.ai: Data masking and synthetic data platform for developer and analytics workflows. Directly comparable as a de-identification vendor selling to enterprises needing privacy-safe data, though Tonic is more focused on structured database / dev environments vs. Limina's multi-modal unstructured emphasis.
- Gretel AI: Synthetic data and privacy-enhancing technology vendor offering de-identification, anonymization, and synthetic data generation APIs. Closely comparable to Limina's transformation features (pseudonymization, synthetic PII) and serves overlapping developer and enterprise AI customers.
Broad incumbents
- AWS (Comprehend / Macie): Amazon's suite of NLP and data security services including Comprehend (PII detection) and Macie (data privacy). Competes broadly via deep cloud-native integration but is cloud-only and pattern-matching-centric — Limina's customer testimonials explicitly compare against Comprehend on accuracy.
- Google Cloud DLP: Google Cloud's Data Loss Prevention API for discovering and de-identifying sensitive data across text and images. A default enterprise option with strong language coverage but cloud-only delivery, contrasting with Limina's on-prem container deployment.
- Azure AI Language (PII / redaction): Microsoft Azure's conversational and text PII detection services. Overlaps with Limina's PHI/PII/PCI use cases inside Microsoft-anchored enterprise stacks and benefits from tight Azure integration that Limina also targets.
- Protegrity: Enterprise data protection and tokenization vendor serving large banks, insurers, and healthcare systems. Overlaps with Limina's financial-services and insurance customers (Zurich, MUFG) on data de-identification and compliance, but as part of a broader data-security portfolio.
Emerging players
- Mostly AI: Synthetic data platform specializing in privacy-safe structured and unstructured data generation. Overlaps with Limina's "generate synthetic PII" capability and serves similar regulated-industry use cases, particularly in Europe.
- Skyflow: Data privacy vault and PII tokenization vendor for enterprises. Comparable in addressing regulated-industry data protection and PCI/PII compliance, with a more vault-centric vs. NLP-centric architecture.
- Datavant: Healthcare data de-identification and connectivity platform focused on HIPAA-compliant health data exchange. Directly comparable to Limina's healthcare/PHI use cases (Providence Health, Semalytix) and expert determination workflows.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks5 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Private AI social profiles
Digital presencePrivate AI compliance and trust
Trust signalCompliance6 records
Private AI financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Private AI leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles4 records
Private AI funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds4 records
Investors12 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Private AI M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Private AI
What does Private AI do?
Private AI sells the Limina platform, a context-aware AI-powered de-identification tool that identifies, redacts, and replaces personally identifiable information (PII), protected health information (PHI), and payment card information (PCI) across 50+ entity types in text, images, audio, and documents. The platform deploys as a container inside the customer's VPC or on-premises infrastructure, supports 52 languages including code-switching, and delivers expert determination-ready outputs for HIPAA, GDPR, CPRA, PCI-DSS, APPI, and Law 25 compliance. Customers access the platform via API subscription, self-serve portal trial, or enterprise licensing.
Is Private AI a public or private company?
Private AI is a private company. It is classified as venture growth investor backed and is currently operating.
When was Private AI founded?
Private AI was founded in 2019. It employs 11 to 50 people.
Where is Private AI based?
Private AI is headquartered in Toronto, Canada, in the North America region.
How does Private AI make money?
Two revenue lines are on record. API Subscription with Usage-Based Component is the primary driver. The others are enterprise Licensing.
Who are Private AI's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are Microsoft Presidio, Tonic.ai and Gretel AI. Broad incumbents are AWS (Comprehend / Macie), Google Cloud DLP, Azure AI Language (PII / redaction) and Protegrity. Emerging players are Mostly AI, Skyflow and Datavant.
Does Private AI have an API?
Yes. Limina API enables real-time detection and de-identification of PII, PHI, and PCI across 50+ entity types. The API processes text, images, audio, and documents, handling billions of API calls per month across enterprise production deployments. Developer documentation is at docs.getlimina.ai.
What industry is Private AI in?
Private AI's product category is Data Privacy and De-identification Software. Its primary akta.pro industry code is HDAAAMAD, Privacy-Preserving ML & Data Protection (e.g., federated learning, differential privacy), with a secondary code of HDAAAKAB, AI Privacy Engineering & Data Governance (PII, consent, retention). Its NAICS code is 51321 and its SIC code is 7372.