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 there is no middle to trust, ours included. Here is how it came together.
- 2024
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 AI infrastructure the assistant runs on.
LinkedInNovember 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 the whole of YoMatrix 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.
- An AI layer was part of the plan from the outset, and always one we would run ourselves rather than a wrapper around someone else's service. It arrived a year later.
- 2025
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).
December 2025
Full AI integration
AI arrives across the products — built in rather than bolted on, and running on hardware we own.
- In YoMatrix the assistant is simply another contact: message @assistant like anyone else, or call it and talk, and it answers out loud.
- It works on what is already yours — searching your messages and your email, setting reminders, translating, checking the weather — through a fixed set of tools rather than free rein over the app.
- By default it runs on our own privately-owned servers, so a question does not go to a third-party AI service. You can point it at another provider with your own key instead; that is your choice to make rather than ours to assume.
- The model runs on those servers, so the words of your question travel. What it acts on does not: the tools run on the device, against your own data, and it can reach nothing you have not given it.
- 2026
April 2026
Encrypted calling proven across real devices
The end-to-end encrypted communications stack shared by YoMatrix and Matrix Vault 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 used rather than one long-lived secret, so compromising a key does not unlock what came before it.
- 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.
May 2026
Email arrives inside the messenger
Every account gets two working email addresses — one at yomatrix.app and one at matrixvault.app, both carrying the same name as your handle — and mail sent to either lands as a conversation in the app, beside the encrypted ones. It has been carrying real mail since May.
- Two addresses, two conversations, one identity: mail to the yomatrix.app address arrives in one thread and mail to the matrixvault.app address in another, so two sides of a life stay apart without folders, rules or a second account. 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 mail that fails the standard sender checks is refused at the door rather than delivered with a warning stuck on it.
- The assistant works on that inbox when you ask it to — summarise what arrived, draft a reply, sort out what actually needs you, or find the message with the invoice in it — searching subject, sender and body rather than making you scroll.
- An email is a stranger's writing, so when the assistant reads one it runs sealed off: no tools, and nothing written into its memory. A message that tries to give your assistant instructions is talking to something that cannot act on them.
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.
LinkedInAugust 2026
Cyclone Fortress trade mark application
The Cyclone Fortress name is filed as a trade mark application with the Intellectual Property Office (IPO).
September 2026
Lara Bakir
Legal & Administration
Master of Laws (LL.M)
Joins to look after the legal and administrative side of the company.
LinkedInToday
YoMatrix today
In development, and coming to the App Store for iPhone and iPad — 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 and view-once 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 and transcription in 59 languages, so a conversation can happen in two languages at once, and a voicemail can be read instead of played.
- An assistant you can message or actually call, 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.
Want to talk to us? Email support@yomatrix.app or use the contact page.