Collaboration has always been at the heart of how IWF drives change online. By working with companies across the digital ecosystem, our goal is to disrupt and shrink the spaces where child sexual abuse material can exist and create a safer internet for every user.
In 2025, IWF deepened its collaboration across more sectors and subsectors than ever before, extending our collective impact far beyond traditional tech boundaries.
In the AI sector, OpenAI, Anthropic and Cohere joined, bringing expertise in generative AI tools that support proactive prevention and safety measures.
Within the AdTech ecosystem, DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science, Mobian and Protected Media joined membership, providing technologies and insights to ensure advertising budget and advertising placements do not inadvertently fund criminal activity on sites where CSAM has been identified, enhancing online advertising safety.
Payment and financial risk specialists Hypernative and Paystack strengthened our work within the financial sector by becoming Members, helping identify and disrupt financial flows linked to abuse. Reddit also joined as a top-tier Member, deepening our collaboration with one of the world’s largest social media and news aggregation platforms.
Coinbase case study
Across all sectors, a defining challenge and opportunity has been the rise of generative AI and the increasing monetisation of child sexual abuse material. These developments shaped our discussions with panellists, including Coinbase, Visa, Nvidia and Hive AI, during the US launch of our Data and Insight Report 2024, where industry leaders explored new approaches to detect and disrupt financial flows associated with abuse.
To support growing demand and engagement, we restructured and expanded our membership function in the second half of 2025. Now part of the Development Directorate alongside our Partnerships Team, this structure consolidates all income-generating and collaboration efforts. Two specialist teams operate within the Membership Team: one focuses on engagement and collaboration, and the other works with organisations exploring IWF Membership. Together, they strengthen existing partnerships while fostering new, meaningful ways of working across sectors.
Membership at IWF continues to go beyond access to tools and datasets. Our Members participate in pilots, working groups and joint projects that shape the future of online safety. A standout example has been our continued partnership with Public Interest Registry (PIR), the operator of the .org domain. Building on their sponsorship of our Associate Member Programme, which provides free access to the Domain Hopping List and Domain Alerts for Registries, they have now extended support to Registrars, helping protect even more of the internet’s infrastructure.
Members also collaborate through events, campaigns and insight-sharing – from hosting panels and roundtables to supporting our global reports and research. These relationships are driven by a shared commitment to transparency, agility and trust, forming the foundation of our fight against child sexual abuse material. Special thanks go to Mastercard and Visa who hosted our UK and US Annual Report launches respectively, in 2024.
In July 2025, we beta-tested Image Intercept, our free-to-use hash checking service designed for start-ups and scale-ups hosting user-generated content. Developed with IWF Member Videntifier, the service enables platforms to check content uploads against IWF’s confirmed image and video hash database.
Within months of launch, Image Intercept processed more than four million images and videos, identifying in excess of 9,300 confirmed matches and attempts to upload child sexual abuse material. With the ability to support multiple hash types – including cryptographic, perceptual and descriptor-based hashes – Image Intercept represents a significant step forward in scaling proactive prevention tools across the industry.
Looking ahead, our focus is on deepening engagement through new touchpoints, including plans for a dedicated Member Portal to provide self-service access to key IWF services and datasets. This will help Members integrate our tools and insights more effectively into their own workflows.
At the core of our membership strategy is a renewed focus on three pillars: Services, Community and Insights. This approach ensures that every Member benefits from IWF’s intelligence and technology while contributing to a coordinated global network dedicated to protecting children online.
Through proactive and reactive disruption measures, our Members are helping shrink digital spaces where perpetrators and offenders think they can operate with impunity and go undetected. By working closer with IWF across the internet ecosystem - to disrupt, share expertise, pilot new tools and collaborate across sectors - Members directly shape a safer internet for children worldwide.
