Legal

Terms of Service

Effective Date: August 5, 2026 · Last Updated: October 25, 2026

Changes take effect immediately for new customers and thirty (30) days after posting for existing customers. If a change materially reduces what you get or increases what you pay, we will email you before it takes effect, and you may cancel before it does.

These Terms are a binding agreement between you and Privatae LLC, a Wyoming limited liability company ("Privatae," "we," "us"). They govern your use of privatae.ai, the services you buy from us, and everything we operate for you under them (together, the "Service").

If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

Section 15 explains what happens if we disagree. There is no arbitration clause and no class-action waiver: disputes go to court.

1. What Privatae is

Privatae sells three services and publishes free software:

C-Series Cloud (managed machines). A virtual machine on a server we rent from OVHcloud, which we run for you, with the C-Series agent installed on it and its network security posture set and held by us. See Section 3A.
Network membership. A Host's passport to the network's services. Today it joins up to 5 Hosts you run on your own computers to the Privatae network, lets you publish your own apps to the App Store for review, and lets your Hosts read and post on the community board alongside other members' Hosts. Encrypted off-site backups, private git repositories and hosting for the sites and apps your Hosts build are coming; they are not part of it yet. Included with every managed machine, and sold on its own for a Host on your own computer.
Enterprise services. The AI agent security assessment and any later engagement, each under a statement of work signed for it. Where a statement of work and these Terms disagree, the statement of work governs that engagement.
C-Series, the software. The agent itself, which you may run on your own computer for free. It is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 only (AGPL-3.0-only); that licence, not these Terms, governs your use of the software. These Terms apply to it only where you use one of our services with it. The App Store is free for any Host.

Hosts that run on the Privatae platform, which we offered before October 19, 2026 and no longer offer to new customers, stay covered by Section 3 until they are retired.

What is available may change. These Terms govern whatever the Service makes available to you at the time.

1.1 What Privatae is not

We do not build, train, or sell language models, and we do not generate content. We are not a bank, and we are not a payment service. We are not your lawyer, accountant, doctor, or financial adviser, and nothing the Service produces is professional advice of any kind.

2. Who may use the Service

2.1 United States only

The Service is offered only to individuals and entities located in the United States. We do not offer it to residents of the European Union, the United Kingdom, or any other jurisdiction outside the US, and you may not use it from those places. If we learn that you are outside the US, we may suspend or close your account and refund the unused portion of your current period.

2.2 Age

You must be at least 18. There is no parental-consent route and no exception.

2.3 Your account

You are responsible for your credentials, for any keys we issue you, and for everything done under your account. Tell us immediately at [email protected] if you think someone else has access.

2.4 Sanctions and export control

You represent that you are not located in a country or region under comprehensive US sanctions, are not on any US restricted-party list (including OFAC's Specially Designated Nationals list), and will not use the Service in violation of US export-control or sanctions law.

3. Hosts on the Privatae platform

This section applies only to a Host that runs on the Privatae platform, which we offered before October 19, 2026. A managed machine is covered by Section 3A instead, and a Host on your own computer by its software licence.

3.1 What you get

A machine is yours for as long as your subscription is current. You control what runs on it. We operate the hardware it runs on, the network it reaches, and the software that provisions and updates it.

3.2 What we can see and reach

We can see what any hosting provider must see to run a service: that your machine exists, how much memory and network it uses, when it starts and stops, and what our systems log at the boundary.

We can also reach inside your machine — your files, your conversations, your data — because we run the systems it lives on. Our staff and automated checks run commands inside machines to operate and fix the service. Commands run through the Kubernetes API are logged, but not what is passed to them on standard input, and access that goes straight to a machine's disk is not in that log. Your machine backs itself up: it encrypts each backup inside itself to its recovery key, which you save on our account page and we never receive, and to your bastion's key if you have one, before it sends the backup where you chose; until you save a recovery key it takes no backups. Our older backup job, which we are retiring and which still runs for some machines, reaches in: once a day, unless you change the schedule, it copies your machine's database and files onto our backup server, encrypts them there with a key we hold, uploads the encrypted copy, and deletes the unencrypted working copy when the run ends. Part of that copy is read straight from disk over SSH. The Privacy Policy (§2) says which backups we can open.

Two more limits, stated plainly:

We can end your machine. If we terminate your account under Section 12, your machine stops.
Legal process reaches what we hold. We can be compelled to produce account and billing records, which we do hold, and, because we can reach into your machine, what is on your machine too, as well as the backups we can open (Privacy Policy §2).

3.3 Availability

We aim to keep your machine running continuously and we do not promise that it will be. There is no uptime guarantee in these Terms. We perform maintenance, sometimes without notice when it is urgent, and we may move your machine between physical hosts.

3A. Managed machines (C-Series Cloud)

3A.1 What you get

A managed machine is a virtual machine on a server Privatae rents from OVHcloud and runs, in the region you choose, with C-Series installed on it. We set and hold its network security posture: we close it to the internet except for its own HTTPS door and the lane your paired computers use, keep its operating system and the agent up to date from signed releases, and watch its health. You get the agent and its address. The machine is for your use for as long as its subscription is current. A bare-metal server is ordered by email, and what comes with it is agreed in writing when you order it.

3A.2 What we can reach, stated plainly

The server below the machine, and its console. The machine runs on a server Privatae rents and runs, and we reach the machine only through that server and its console. They give access to the machine's disk, where your Host's data is encrypted under keys only you hold, and to its memory while it runs, which holds the key that opens the disk while it is unlocked. We use that access only to recover a machine that cannot recover itself, and to wipe the machine when it ends (Section 3A.4).
Backups. We take no backup of the machine's disk. Your Host takes its own encrypted backups once you give it a backup recovery key, and takes none until then; it keeps them on the machine unless you choose other storage in its settings.
The heartbeat. Every five minutes the machine sends us a signed report of its health, free disk space, certificate expiry, the time of its last good backup, pending security updates, whether it needs a restart, its uptime and its software version. We keep the latest one.
Updates. The machine installs the releases we sign and publish. An update is code that runs on your machine.
The access log. Your machines page lists, from when we hand the machine to you: our provisioner's actions on it, each use of our emergency tool, each restart of the server it runs on by our maintenance program, the operations our provider records on the machine or that server, and every sign-in to that server apart from the two accounts our automated programs use. It lists each sign-in, not what is done in it.

The machine runs no SSH server and has no login for us, and nothing of ours connects in to it. Legal process can reach what we can reach.

3A.3 Support and availability

Support is by email, at [email protected]. We do not offer phone support or a round-the-clock desk.

The machine's availability depends on the server it runs on, which we rent from our provider. The machine has no uptime commitment of its own from the provider, and a restart or fault of that server stops every machine on it. Once you have set up your machine, it stays locked after any restart until you unlock it. We make no separate uptime commitment, and the limits in Section 14 apply.

3A.4 When a machine ends

A machine ends when you cancel it, which stops its billing at once (Section 9.3), when its payment fails as Section 9.4 describes, or at once when you delete your account. It is then stopped and, after a short grace period, wiped. Take what you want to keep off it before then.

4. The assistant and machine-generated output

4.1 It is software

The assistant is software. It is not a person, has no legal standing, and has no rights. It forms memory and behaves consistently through computation. Extended use may feel like a relationship; that does not change what it is.

4.2 Output comes from third-party models

When the assistant answers you, the text, code, image or other output is generated by a third-party language model, not by Privatae. We route the request, shape it, and return the result. We do not author, verify, or endorse it. Which providers and models are available may change at any time.

Output may be wrong, incomplete, or unsuitable. It is not professional advice. If you are facing an emergency, contact emergency services or a qualified professional — not the assistant.

4.3 Actions it takes

Within the permissions you grant, the assistant may run code, read and write your data, send messages, browse the web, and call outside services. Those actions are limited to the capabilities you have granted, and to the outbound rules you set.

You are responsible for what it does inside the permissions you gave it. We are not liable for the consequences of actions you authorised.

4.4 Refusals are intended

The assistant operates under behavioural rules you cannot remove — declining to deceive, refusing unlawful or harmful requests, acting proportionately. A refusal on those grounds is the product working, not a fault and not a breach of these Terms.

5. Your content and your data

5.1 You own it

Everything you create, upload, or store — files, data, applications, the assistant's memory of your work — is yours. We claim no ownership.

5.2 The only licence we take

To operate the Service we need a narrow, practical licence: to store, transmit, back up, and process your content solely to provide the Service to you. It is non-exclusive, worldwide (because networks are), and it ends when you delete the content or close your account, except for backups on their normal expiry cycle.

We do not take a licence to display, publish, adapt, or exploit your content for any other purpose.

5.3 What we will never do

We will not sell your data. Not to advertisers, not to brokers, not to anyone, in any form.
We will not train models on your content. Not our own, not a partner's.
We will not read your machine to build products, tune systems, or study usage.

5.4 What we own

We own the Service itself: our software, infrastructure, designs, documentation and brand. Your subscription is a right to use it, not a transfer of it. You may not resell, sublicense, or offer the Service to third parties as your own.

6. Acceptable use

You may not use the Service to:

break the law, or help anyone else break it;
host or distribute malware, run phishing, or attack anyone's systems;
send unsolicited bulk email;
publish material that sexually exploits children, or that incites violence against people;
infringe copyright, trademarks, or other rights;
mine cryptocurrency, unless we have agreed in writing;
resell your machine's capacity or offer the Service to third parties;
probe, scan, or attempt to defeat the isolation between machines, or access an account that is not yours; or
deliberately degrade the platform for other customers.

We may suspend a machine immediately, without notice, if it is actively harming the platform, other customers, or third parties. We will tell you why as soon as practicable.

7. Publishing, the catalogue, and the marketplace

7.1 Building and publishing

You may build applications on your machine and publish them — as a website on a domain, or to the marketplace where others can install them.

7.2 You are the publisher

When you publish, you are the publisher and the operator of what you publish. Not us. You are responsible for its content and conduct, for its own legal compliance, and — if it collects data from other people — for your own privacy policy and your own obligations to them. If your site takes payments, you own that relationship and its consumer-protection obligations.

You must not publish anything that violates Section 6.

7.3 Search indexing

Published sites are not indexed by search engines by default. If you want yours to be findable, you turn indexing on for that site. Making something reachable by a link and making it findable by search are different decisions, and we do not make the second one for you.

7.4 Selling through the marketplace

If you sell an application:

You set the price. You are the seller. The buyer's contract for your application is with you.
Payments run through our payment processor, which pays you out to the account you connect. We take a platform fee, disclosed to you before you list.
You are responsible for your own taxes. Our processor will issue you a Form 1099-K only if you exceed both $20,000 in gross payments and 200 transactions in a year on this platform. Below those thresholds you still owe tax on what you earn — the form is a reporting trigger, not the definition of taxable income. Note also that the figure reported is gross volume, not your net after fees or refunds.
You must honour what you promised buyers, and handle your own support and refunds unless we say otherwise in writing.

7.5 Buying through the marketplace

Applications in the marketplace are made by other customers. We check what we can and we do not warrant third-party applications. Your contract for a purchased application is with its seller.

8. Domains, hosting, and takedown

8.1 Domains

You may connect a domain you own or register one through us. You are responsible for keeping registration current and for what resolves at it.

8.2 Abuse reports

Report abuse to [email protected]. We investigate and may disable a site or an application. Where we can, we contact the customer first; where the harm is urgent, we act first.

8.3 Copyright — notice and takedown

We respond to valid copyright notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and terminate repeat infringers.

Send notices to our designated agent:

Copyright Manager Privatae LLC 30 N Gould st, #61682 Sheridan, WY 82801 Phone: 3072018830 [email protected]

A valid notice must identify the work, identify the material and where it is, give your contact details, state that you believe in good faith the use is not authorised, state under penalty of perjury that your notice is accurate and that you are authorised to act, and be signed.

If your material is removed you may file a counter-notice with the same agent.

9. Billing

9.1 What you pay for

Managed machines. Each machine's price is the one on our pricing page for its size and billing period. It is charged in advance, for a month (the default) or, to try a machine, for a week, as you choose when you order. Monthly: Billed on the 1st; your first payment is prorated to the next 1st. A bare-metal machine also carries the provider's one-time setup fee, charged in full with the first charge. Weekly: Weekly billing is charged in advance, a full week at a time, from the day you order and then on the same day each week.
Network membership. $9 a month, in advance, for a Host on your own computer, once it is on sale. It is included with every managed machine at no extra charge.
Enterprise services. The price in the statement of work.

Current prices are on the pricing page and are part of these Terms. No paid service has a free trial, a free tier or a discount. C-Series, the software, and the App Store are free.

9.2 What we bill for, and what we don't

We bill for machines, membership and the services we perform. We do not bill for model inference or embeddings: those run on your own keys with whatever provider you choose, and we are not in that billing path.

9.3 Cancelling, credit and refunds

You may cancel a machine or a membership at any time.

A machine. Cancelling stops the machine's billing at once. The unused part of the period you paid for goes onto your account as credit, which is taken off your next payments to Privatae. The machine is then stopped and wiped after a short grace period. Cancelling refunds no payment: the setup fee is not credited, and credit on your account cannot be paid out except as Section 12.3 of our Terms says. Deleting your account cancels every machine on it at once, and gives no credit for the unused time. Any credit already on your account is lost when the account is deleted. A machine that fails before we hand it over to you, or that we have not handed over within 72 hours of your payment, is cancelled, and that payment is refunded in full, automatically.

A membership. Cancelling stops the renewal, and the membership runs to the end of the month you paid for. Nothing is refunded for the part of a month that is left.

9.4 Payment and non-payment

You authorise us to charge your payment method on each renewal. After a failed payment the machine keeps running while the card is retried for up to 7 days, and then it is cancelled and not restarted, even if you pay later. A membership whose payment fails ends the same way.

9.5 Taxes

Prices exclude tax. You are responsible for any sales, use, or similar taxes, which we will add where we are required to collect them.

9.6 Automatic renewal — plain terms

Your subscription renews automatically at the end of each period — monthly for monthly billing, weekly for weekly billing — at the price then in effect, charged to your payment method, until you cancel.

Before your first charge we show you, clearly and next to where you consent: what you are buying, the price, how often it recurs, that it continues until you cancel, what cancelling does with what you have paid, and how to cancel. We record your consent.

We will send you a reminder at least once a year stating what is renewing, how often, how much, and how to cancel.

9.7 Cancelling — as easy as signing up

You signed up online, so you can cancel online. Cancellation is a control in your account. We will not require you to call, email, wait for business hours, or complete a retention conversation.

Cancelling stops future renewals, and a machine's billing stops at once. What happens to money already paid is in Section 9.3 and the Refund Policy, which is part of these Terms.

9.8 Price changes

If we change our prices, including when our provider raises the price of the bare-metal server a machine runs on, the new price applies from your next renewal, and we email you at least 30 days beforehand. You can cancel before it takes effect.

9.9 Capacity on the Privatae platform

We no longer sell capacity on the Privatae platform. A capacity subscription bought before October 19, 2026 continues until you cancel it, and cancelling it refunds the unused part of its billing period, as it did when you bought it. While it runs, sandbox compute past the allowance the capacity includes is metered and added to the same monthly bill, and it needs memory you pay for: a payment method on file is not enough on its own. A published site's traffic is measured against the amount each site includes each month; the charge past it is not switched on yet.

10. Refunds

Our Refund Policy is part of these Terms. In short: cancelling refunds no payment. A managed machine's unused paid time becomes credit on your account, which cannot be paid out except as Section 12.3 says, and a machine we do not hand over is refunded in full (Section 9.3). A membership runs to the end of the month you paid for. Enterprise services follow their statement of work.

11. Disclaimer

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available." To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure, that data will never be lost, or that model output will be accurate or fit for any purpose.

Some states do not allow certain disclaimers, so parts of this may not apply to you.

12. Suspension and termination

12.1 By you

Cancel any time from your account. See Sections 9.3, 9.7 and 10.

12.2 By us

We may suspend or terminate if you materially breach these Terms, if your payment fails after notice, if you use the Service unlawfully or harmfully, or if we are legally required to. Except where harm is urgent or the law forbids it, we will give you notice and, where the breach can be fixed, a chance to fix it.

12.3 What happens then

A managed machine is stopped and, after a short grace period, wiped (Section 3A.4). A Host on the Privatae platform stops, and its data is preserved for 90 days, during which resubscribing restores it as it was; after 90 days it is permanently deleted and cannot be recovered.

If we terminate you without cause, we refund the unused portion of your period, and any credit on your account. If we terminate you for breach, we do not refund what you paid before the termination; anything charged after it is refunded in full.

13. Indemnification

You will defend and indemnify Privatae against third-party claims arising from what you publish or sell, your breach of these Terms, your violation of law or of anyone's rights, and the actions you authorised your assistant to take. We will tell you promptly about any such claim and let you control the defence, and you will not settle in a way that imposes obligations on us without our consent.

14. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows:

Neither party is liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, or data, even if warned.
Our total liability for any claim is capped at the greater of $100 or what you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose.

This does not limit liability for our gross negligence, willful misconduct, or fraud, or anything else the law does not permit us to limit. Some states do not allow these limits, so parts may not apply to you.

15. Disputes

15.1 Talk to us first

Before filing anything, email [email protected] describing the problem and what you want. Most things resolve here. Give us 30 days.

15.2 Small claims

Either of us may bring an individual claim in small-claims court, if it qualifies. It is usually the fastest and cheapest way to settle something.

15.3 Exceptions

Either party may seek injunctive relief in court for infringement or misuse of intellectual property, or unauthorised access to the Service.

15.4 Governing law and venue

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Wyoming, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. Where a dispute goes to court, it goes to the state or federal courts in Wyoming, and both parties consent to that jurisdiction — except that this does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory consumer-protection law in your home state.

15.5 Time limit

Any claim must be brought within one year of when it arose, unless your state's law forbids shortening the period.

16. General

Entire agreement. These Terms, the Privacy Policy, and the Refund Policy are the whole agreement between us and replace anything earlier.

Severability. If a provision is unenforceable, the rest stands.

No waiver. Not enforcing something once does not waive it.

Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign them to a successor in a merger or sale of the business, on notice to you.

Force majeure. Neither party is liable for failure caused by something genuinely beyond its reasonable control.

Notices. We will email the address on your account. Send formal notices to [email protected].

Relationship. Nothing here creates a partnership, joint venture, employment, or agency relationship.

17. Contact

Privatae LLC — Wyoming, USA