Miðeind celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2025. It was a productive and successful year for the company, setting the stage for what promises to be an exciting 2026.

The clearest measure of our success is the number of registered users on Málstaður, our language technology platform. We started the year with just over 7,000 users, but by the end of 2025, that number reached 22,000—a threefold increase. The reception of Málstaður has been fantastic among the general public, businesses, institutions, and schools alike. It is also gratifying that an unusually high percentage of registered users are paying subscribers, compared to industry standards—and that ratio grew steadily throughout the year.

The biggest news of the year in our context was undoubtedly Miðeind's acquisition of Snara, the venerable and renowned digital dictionary service. After a period of negotiation, a purchase agreement was reached with previous owner Forlagið in June. On Icelandic Language Day, November 16th, we launched a sleek and fast new interface for Snara within Málstaður. The opportunities for integrating Snara's dictionaries and reference works with other Málstaður features are numerous. Users can already look up word definitions directly within the Málfríður grammar checker, but that is just the tip of the iceberg of potential future enhancements.

After extensive development this year, Málstaður has become a highly advanced Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, featuring all essential functionality: user and group management, access control, usage logging, pricing structures, and complex invoicing. It provides a solid foundation for the wide range of language technology and AI-related services that Miðeind can and will provide in the future.

Málstaður's user-facing features also made great strides during the year. In March, Erlendur, our machine translation tool, was added to the platform. Erlendur translates text fluently between Icelandic and numerous other languages, performing significantly better than Google Translate. Crucially, it looks up words in dictionaries behind the scenes (where Snara will come in handy!). It also allows users to define their own glossaries and translation pairs, facilitating custom translations, reducing errors, and improving consistency. We are pleased to report that Erlendur was a top competitor in the international WMT machine translation competition in Suzhou, China, in early November. Tasks included translations from English into Icelandic, as well as glossary-supported translations.

In April, we added functionality for summarizing texts and generating meeting minutes. It is now possible to record meetings (for example on a smartphone), send the audio file to Hreimur for speech-to-text conversion, feed the text into the summarizer, and receive detailed minutes of what was discussed and decided. At Miðeind, we "eat our own dog food" by using this tool to summarize internal company and board meetings—and I can attest that these minutes are far superior to those written by the average note-taker! Moreover, this technology allows all meeting participants to focus fully on the discussion itself.

Automatic meeting minutes with Hreimur and Málfríður

The newest feature on Málstaður allows users to automatically generate meeting minutes from an audio recording.

The aforementioned Hreimur has also improved and can now distinguish between speakers in recorded conversations. Its user interface has become much more powerful and flexible, making it easier to work with (and translate) subtitles, among many other enhancements.

Speaking of subtitling and translating visual media: Miðeind applied for and received a substantial grant from the Rannís Strategic Research and Development Program for Language and Technology. This project aims to translate foreign speech in TV and video content into Icelandic speech, retaining voice characteristics as closely as possible to the original. This three-year R&D project is primarily intended to facilitate and speed up the dubbing of children's material, but if successful, it will work for any type of content. We hope this project will significantly increase the availability of dubbed material in Icelandic, particularly content that would not otherwise have been translated. Success in this area could be vital for the future of our language.

We were pleased that as a result of Miðeind's submission and proposal in the government's consultation portal regarding the Minister of Culture's bill on the cultural contribution of streaming services (e.g., Netflix and Disney), the bill was amended. The change ensures that streaming services' investment in Icelandic subtitling and dubbing will offset their prescribed cultural contribution. This effectively makes Icelandic subtitling and dubbing “free” (as in beer) for the streaming services, providing a boost for the language—as well as for translators, voice actors, and the Icelandic language technology sector.

Miðeind maintains a leaderboard tracking the Icelandic capabilities of all major AI language models. The models are tested and scored on various tasks, such as grammatical inflection, error identification, fill-in-the-blanks, and cultural knowledge. The leaderboard gained increasing attention this year, and we know it is used as a benchmark by major AI companies. This includes Google; and whether by coincidence or not, their Gemini 2.5 Pro and 3.0 Pro models jumped to the top of the leaderboard towards the end of the year. The performance of Gemini 3.0 Pro is particularly noteworthy, achieving an average score of over 88%. This suggests our tests are becoming saturated—meaning they are becoming too easy for the best models. We will address this in the new year. Well done, Google!

Icelandic is not just grammar and inflections; it is also fun and provides opportunites to combine language play with brain exercise. The ever-popular Netskrafl (Online Crossword Game), which 10% of Iceland's population has registered to play at some point, received a facelift late in the year and will move entirely to Málstaður in 2026. In December, we added Gáta dagsins (Riddle of the Day), a daily puzzle where players try to find the highest-scoring move on a crossword board. A fierce battle among the country's crossword masters takes place every day to make the list of the first 50 solvers.

Miðeind continued to take an active part in public debate regarding the opportunities and challenges of AI and language technology. Company representatives have written numerous articles, appeared in radio and television interviews, hosted booths at Researchers' Night and the UT-messan IT conference, welcomed student groups, spoken at conferences, and participated in panel discussions both at home and abroad. We also formulated and published a statement on the company's policy and purpose, while considering the best operating model to serve that mission. These reflections will certainly continue in the new year.

As mentioned at the start, 2025 was a year of harvest and success. The team at Miðeind, under the decisive leadership of CEO Linda Heimisdóttir and CTO Þorvaldur Helgason, is exceptionally talented and cohesive, and the results reflect that. I have worked in IT for over 40 years, and I know a top-notch team when I see one. It is a true privilege to come to work every day and see our powerful group firing on all cylinders to serve a worthy cause in the exciting fields of AI and language technology. I look forward to seeing what we can accomplish in the new year, as all signs point to it being even more successful than the one now coming to an end.

Happy New Year!