The people behind
Matrix Vault,YoMatrix & Cyclone Fortress.

Matrix Vault, part of the trilogy of products, is built by a small team with a large ambition: an entire private life — files, passwords, browsing and messages — held on the iPhone you already own, encrypted there, behind a login that does not look like one. Your private content is never kept on a server in a form we could open. 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 Matrix Vault and YoMatrix share, and the privately-owned AI infrastructure the assistant runs on.

   LinkedIn
3. November 2024

   Matrix Vault, YoMatrix 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.

   • Matrix Vault became the all-in-one private suite for iOS: an encrypted vault, a password manager, a private browser and a full end-to-end encrypted messenger, behind a login that does not look like one.
   • YoMatrix became the standalone end-to-end encrypted messenger and telecommunication app, for people who want the messaging without the rest of the suite.
   • 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: AES-256 encryption, keys and passwords that leave the device only inside your PIN-encrypted backup, if you choose one, and a second vault that can be opened under pressure without revealing that the first one exists.
   • 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.

   Matrix VaultYoMatrixCyclone Fortress
4. 2025
5. November 2025

   Matrix Vault trade mark application

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

6. December 2025

   Full AI integration

   AI arrives in Matrix Vault and Cyclone Fortress — built into the product rather than bolted on, and running on hardware we own.

   • It works on what is already yours — searching your messages, your email and your notes, 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 your question travels, and so does whatever a tool finds to answer it. The tools themselves run on the device, against your own data, and it can reach nothing you have not given it.
7. 2026
8. May 2026

   Email arrives inside the messenger

   Every account gets its own email address at matrixvault.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 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 — and one tap moves an email into the rest of Matrix Vault: the sender saved as a contact, attachments filed into the encrypted file vault, links kept as bookmarks, the whole message stored as a secure note.
   • 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.
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

    Matrix Vault today

    In development, and coming to the App Store for iPhone and iPad — one app holding the parts of a private life that usually end up scattered across half a dozen services owned by other people.

    • A login that does not look like one, and a second vault behind a different PIN. The decoy is a complete, working vault you fill with ordinary things; nothing in the app reveals that the real one exists, which is the only version of this idea that is worth anything.
    • The vault itself: files and photos under AES-256, a password manager, and a private browser whose history has nowhere else to go.
    • YoMatrix messaging, inside it: end-to-end encrypted chats, disappearing messages, stories, translation in 59 languages, voice-note transcription — and no phone number anywhere in it.
    • Email in the app, an assistant you can message, and encrypted backup and transfer for moving to a new phone without handing the contents to anyone in between.
    • Self-hosted on our own infrastructure, with no third-party analytics and no tracking — with your encrypted content held where no one, including us, can open it.

    See everything Matrix Vault does