Building AI You Can Trust
LucenAI was established to enable organisations to apply advanced AI capabilities to their own data without compromising security, control, or trust.
Origins
The core technology behind LucenAI originated from research at the University of Derby, led by Dr. Harry Yu, focusing on improving the accuracy, recall, and precision of LLM training to create more trustworthy AI. This research identified a critical market gap: while frontier models (OpenAI, Gemini, etc.) offer immense power, they often lack the guardrails to prevent hallucinations or the security to handle sensitive data.
LucenAI was built to bridge this gap with a flexible architecture that allows organizations to deploy either external frontier models or privately hosted, open-source models to ensure data sovereignty. Beyond security, LucenAI's modular design is engineered to plug directly into a customer's existing systems, delivering high-integrity responses, including knowing when to ask for more data rather than guessing, without the need for extensive data cleansing or exploration.
Validation
These ideas were subsequently proven through a collaborative AI digital transformation initiative between the University of Derby and Bloc Digital. The partnership combined academic research with practical industrial delivery, demonstrating how AI systems could operate securely within organisational boundaries while remaining connected to live data and operational systems. The work also contributed to wider regional objectives around innovation, skills development and applied digital capability.
Foundation
Building on the success of this collaboration, Brian Scanlon, Dr Harry Yu and Trung Bui founded LucenAI to enable other organisations to realise the benefits of AI in a secure, governed and practical way. LucenAI was formed as a university spin-out, with the University of Derby retaining an equity stake and an ongoing role in the company's development.
Partnership
LucenAI continues to work closely with the University of Derby and its academic community, drawing on expertise in computer science, data science and mathematics to develop and validate its AI architecture and models. This ongoing relationship ensures the platform and its modules remains grounded in rigorous research while being shaped by real-world operational requirements.
Today
Today, LucenAI supports organisations seeking to deploy AI within their own environments, on their own data and under clear governance. The platform reflects its origins in applied research and industry collaboration, with a focus on building AI systems that are secure, explainable and fit for use in complex, real-world settings.