The people behind
YoMatrix,Matrix Vault & Cyclone Fortress.

YoMatrix, part of the trilogy of products, is built by a small team with a large ambition: a messenger that answers to no one but you. No phone number, no address book handed over, and encryption that happens on your device rather than on somebody's server — so the servers in the middle, ours included, carry messages they cannot read. Here is how it came together.

1. 2024
2. November 2024

   Nab Bakir

   Founder & Chief Technology Officer

   BSc (Hons) Computer Science

   Leads engineering across the trilogy of products: the iOS and macOS applications and their security architecture, the end-to-end encrypted communications stack that YoMatrix and Matrix Vault share, and the privately-owned infrastructure the products run on.

   LinkedIn
3. November 2024

   YoMatrix, Matrix Vault and Cyclone Fortress

   Development begins on three products with one idea behind them — security software that does its work on your own device, on the iPhone and Mac you already own.

   • YoMatrix became the standalone end-to-end encrypted messenger and telecommunication app: chats, voice and video calls, and no phone number anywhere in it.
   • Matrix Vault became the all-in-one private suite for iOS — an encrypted vault, password manager and private browser — with YoMatrix messaging built into it.
   • Cyclone Fortress became the privacy and security cockpit for macOS: secure erasure, encrypted vaults, malware scanning, firewall and network control, and a full privacy audit, in one app.
   • The security model came before the features: keys generated and kept on the device, encryption performed there rather than on a server, and an identity that is a name you choose instead of a number a carrier issued you.

   YoMatrixMatrix VaultCyclone Fortress
4. 2025
5. November 2025

   Matrix Vault trade mark application

   The Matrix Vault name — the sibling product YoMatrix is built alongside — is filed as a trade mark application with the Intellectual Property Office (IPO).

6. 2026
7. April 2026

   Encrypted calling proven across real devices

   The end-to-end encrypted communications stack at the heart of YoMatrix passes live testing: multi-party video and voice calls between real devices, on real networks. It is the hardest thing in either product to get right.

   • Keys are agreed on the device itself — a Curve25519 exchange, derived through HKDF, producing AES-256-GCM authenticated encryption — and a fresh ephemeral key is generated for every message rather than reusing one long-lived secret.
   • Group traffic is encrypted separately to every member instead of to one shared group key held on a server. That is more work per message, and it is the point: there is no single key sitting somewhere to be handed over, or to outlive the member it was issued to.
   • Calls run as an end-to-end-encrypted mesh over WebRTC — each device encrypts and sends its own stream directly to every other participant. That is why the ceiling is six video or ten voice: the cost on each device climbs with every person added, and the usual way to escape that, mixing the streams on a server, only scales by letting the server see the media.
   • A direct route often isn't available at all, because most devices sit behind NAT and firewalls. Where one can't be negotiated the call falls back to a relay that forwards packets it cannot read — the media stays end-to-end encrypted either way, and the relay never holds a key.
8. May 2026

   Email arrives inside the messenger

   Every account gets its own email address at yomatrix.app, carrying the same name as your handle, and mail sent to it lands as a conversation in the app, beside the encrypted ones. It has been carrying real mail since May.

   • Replies go back out as ordinary email from your own address, and that sending address is fixed on the server rather than taken from the app, so it cannot be forged into someone else's.
   • Email is not end-to-end encrypted, and the app says so on every single message. Ordinary mail reaches a mail server in the clear — that is how email works, everywhere — so ours can read a message in the moment before it encrypts it toward your device. Each one therefore carries a permanent “Server-relayed · Not E2E” badge, so it can never be mistaken for the end-to-end encrypted conversations sitting beside it.
   • What happens in that moment is bounded, and worth stating: attachments are encrypted in memory before anything is written to disk, subjects, bodies and file names are never logged, and every message shows whether it passed the standard sender checks, so a suspicious one stands out.
9. June 2026

   James Burgess

   Chief Executive Officer

   An AI-security advocate and technology entrepreneur with more than 20 years in the IT industry, spanning international trade, fintech, cyber security and AI, and previously founder and chief executive of an international trading business that grew beyond $200 million in turnover. Joins to lead the business and take the products to market.

   LinkedIn
10. August 2026

    Cyclone Fortress trade mark application

    The Cyclone Fortress name is filed as a trade mark application with the Intellectual Property Office (IPO).

11. September 2026

    Lara Bakir

    Legal & Administration

    Master of Laws (LL.M)

    Joins to look after the legal and administrative side of the company.

    LinkedIn
12. Today

    YoMatrix today

    In development, and coming to the App Store for iPhone, iPad and Mac — a messenger that asks you for nothing it does not need, starting with your phone number.

    • End-to-end encrypted chats and group chats, encrypted voice and video calls, disappearing messages, and stories — with the encryption done on your device, so there is no point in the middle where it is briefly readable.
    • No phone number, and no address book upload. You are a handle you chose, which is also why nobody can find you by knowing your number.
    • Translation of incoming messages into 59 languages, so a conversation can happen in two languages at once, and voice messages you can read instead of play.
    • Email in the app, and a bot and developer API for the people who want to build on it.
    • Self-hosted on our own infrastructure, with no third-party analytics and no tracking. The keys are yours; there is no one to ask for your messages, including us.

    See everything YoMatrix does