Terms of Service

1. Who we are

Maelstrom AI ("Maelstrom", "we", "us") is a professional matching platform operated by Maelstrom AI Technologies, Inc., registered at 300 Creek View Road, Newark, DE 19711. You can reach us at admin@maelstrom.it.com or 630-649-9958 (Text Only).

2. Acceptance

By creating an account, stating an intent, or otherwise using Maelstrom, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy and Refund Policy. If you are using Maelstrom on behalf of a company, you confirm you have authority to bind that company, and "you" means that company.

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

3. Eligibility

Maelstrom is for business use by people aged 18 or over. It is not directed at children and we do not knowingly allow anyone under 18 to create an account. You must not use Maelstrom if you are barred from doing so under applicable law or sanctions.

4. Accounts and access

We use passwordless sign-in: we email a single-use link to the address you provide. Anyone with access to that inbox can access your account, so keep your email secure. Tell us promptly at admin@maelstrom.it.com if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission.

One account is for one person. Do not share credentials or sign-in links. Organization plans exist precisely so that teams can each have their own account under one organization.

5. What the service does

You state an intent: your position, the counterparty you are seeking, and your criteria. Maelstrom scores your intent against intents held by people in complementary positions. When a pairing scores above our threshold and both sides accept, a private conversation opens between you.

Specific features include:

• Double opt-in introductions. Nothing opens unless both sides accept. Declines are not disclosed to the other party.
• Anonymous intents. On paid plans you may cloak an intent so it is described but not attributed until both parties accept. Cloaking hides your name and headline; it does not anonymize anything you choose to write into the intent's description, so do not include identifying or confidential details you are not ready to share.
• Rooms. Private matching pools. Anyone holding the link or code can join a room. Treat a room link like an unlocked door: share it only with people you intend to admit.
• Integrations. You may add scheduling and video links to your account. These are shown to people you have matched with.
• Calendar connections. You may optionally connect a Google or Microsoft calendar. We request free/busy access only and use it solely to propose meeting times that suit both parties. Proposed times are shared with a counterparty only when you choose to propose them. You can disconnect at any time, and revoke access with your provider directly.
• Exploring before verifying. You may use Maelstrom in a read-only capacity — stating intents, viewing matches and the reasons behind them, editing your profile, and setting your availability — before verifying your identity. Actions that reach another user (accepting an introduction, messaging, joining a room, proposing or booking a meeting) require identity verification.
• App directory. Apps listed publicly have been reviewed by us for the plausibility of the permissions they request and the completeness of their listing. Review is not an endorsement, a security audit, or a guarantee about how a developer handles your data. Each app is operated by its developer under their own terms and privacy policy. Install counts are derived from live authorisations. We may suspend an app at any time, which immediately ends its access for every user.
• Meeting attendance and credits. After a meeting has passed, either party may record whether it took place. A reported non-attendance is only counted against someone once a dispute window has passed without them disputing it, and a disputed report is never counted. Where a non-attendance is confirmed, we credit an introduction back to the party who attended. Credits are added to that member's allowance, are granted at most once per meeting, do not expire, and have no cash value. Repeatedly failing to attend meetings you have agreed to may reduce how prominently you appear to other members.
• Invitations. You may invite people to Maelstrom. An invitation is tied to a specific intent of yours and shows the recipient what you are seeking; it never discloses your contact details. Invitations are limited per member per week, and you must only invite people you have a genuine reason to approach. A recipient who declines is added to a permanent, platform-wide do-not-invite list — no member may invite that address again — and you are told only that it was declined. Where we grant an introduction credit for an invitation, it is granted only when the person you invited states an intent, never for merely creating an account, and may be withheld or reversed where we believe invitations are being misused.
• Connected apps. You may authorise third-party applications to act on your behalf through OAuth. A connected app is limited to a share of your API allowance so that one application cannot exhaust the capacity available to your other integrations. An app receives only the permissions you approve, can never exceed your own permissions, and you may revoke it at any time — which takes effect immediately and affects only your account. Apps are operated by their developers, not by us; an app that has not been reviewed is identified as such before you approve it. If you publish an app, you are responsible for the security of your client secret and for handling users' data in accordance with your own privacy policy and applicable law.
• Developer API. You may access your own data programmatically using scoped API keys. You are responsible for keeping keys secret and for anything done with them; revoke a key immediately if it is exposed. Each plan includes a monthly allowance measured in units. Beyond it, requests are refused unless you have added a payment method and explicitly enabled metered usage — we will not bill you for usage you did not opt into. Rate limits and allowances may be adjusted with notice. Automated access must go through the API rather than by scraping the interface, and the acceptable-use rules in section 7 apply equally to API traffic.
• Counterparts. People you have matched with remain available to you after the first meeting: the conversation stays open and further meetings can be arranged. Either party ending the relationship does not delete the other's record of the conversation. Relationships with no contact for 30 days are archived — moved out of your active list but fully preserved and restorable — unless you mark them as kept or a meeting is booked.
• Intent freshness. We ask whether an intent is still current after 90 days of no edit or confirmation, and pause it at 120 days if we hear nothing. Pausing is reversible and deletes nothing; confirming resumes matching at once.
• Activity. Intents belonging to accounts inactive for 60 days are paused automatically and resume on your next sign-in. Presence and meeting attendance affect match ranking. Repeatedly failing to attend meetings you have agreed to may reduce how prominently you appear to others.
• Scheduling. You set your own availability, including how much notice you require before a meeting may be moved and how many times it may be moved. Those settings protect you and are applied to the other party's actions, not your own. The notice required is capped by the lead time a meeting was booked with. Proposed times are shown in both parties' timezones. A proposal is not a commitment until the recipient confirms it, and either party may reschedule or cancel — rescheduling requires the other side to confirm the new time. Meetings may be added to your calendar automatically only if you grant that permission explicitly; otherwise a calendar file is provided.
• Reporting. Every conversation carries a reporting route. Reports are reviewed by a person and are not disclosed to the person reported.
• Vouching. Verified users may vouch for others. A vouch is that person's opinion, not our endorsement, and carries no verification of anything.
• Verification. Company verification reflects control of an email address or a domain, or a registration found on a public register, and — separately — verification of your identity through a third-party provider. See section 6 for what these do and do not mean.
• Profiles. You may customize your profile; paid plans additionally unlock banner and colour customization. Profiles may be set to private, which replaces the public view for anyone but you (or, for an organization, its members).

Introduction volumes and concurrent intent limits depend on your plan and reset weekly. We may adjust matching thresholds, scoring, and quotas to improve match quality.

6. No vetting, no guarantees, no advice

This section matters more than any other. Read it.

We do not vet users. We do not verify that someone holds the position they claim, controls the capital they describe, owns the business they offer, or intends to deal honestly.

What verification badges actually mean. "Work email" means an address sits on a company domain rather than a consumer mailbox. "Company domain verified" means someone published a DNS record we specified on that domain. "Registered company" means a company with the submitted name and number appeared as active on a public company register, checked automatically or by a person at Maelstrom, and that its name fits the verified domain. "ID-checked" means a person passed an identity check run by our provider. That is the whole of it. A badge is not an endorsement, a credit check, a background check, an identity document check, or any representation about character, solvency, authority to transact, or track record. Someone with the highest badge can still be a bad counterparty, and control of a domain can change hands.

Do your own due diligence. Before sending money, sharing confidential information, signing anything, or granting access to systems or assets, independently verify who you are dealing with and take professional advice. Be especially careful with anyone who pressures you toward speed, secrecy, unusual payment methods, upfront fees, or off-platform communication early in a conversation.

We are not a party to your dealings. Any agreement, transaction, investment, employment relationship, or partnership you enter with another user is between you and them. We are not a broker, dealer, investment adviser, placement agent, business broker, employment agency, escrow agent, or fiduciary, and we do not participate in, underwrite, or guarantee any transaction.

Nothing on Maelstrom is professional advice. Content produced by the platform, including AI-written introduction briefs and match explanations, is informational only and is not legal, financial, investment, tax, accounting, or employment advice.

No guarantee of results. We do not promise that you will receive any introductions, that introductions will lead to meetings or deals, or that any counterparty will be suitable. Matching depends on who else is on the platform and what they are seeking.

7. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Misrepresent your identity, position, company, authority, credentials, or what you are seeking;
• Use Maelstrom to defraud, phish, or deceive anyone, including by soliciting advance fees, impersonating investors or acquirers, or harvesting confidential business information under false pretenses;
• Send unsolicited bulk messages, advertising, or recruitment spam through match threads;
• Use invitations to contact people you have no genuine reason to approach, or to send bulk or unsolicited marketing;
• Promote pyramid schemes, chain referral schemes, or business models whose income derives primarily from recruitment;
• Scrape, crawl, bulk-export, or systematically collect other users' information, or use automated means to create intents, accounts, or rooms;
• Create multiple accounts to evade quotas, plan limits, verification, or a suspension, or attempt identity verification using a document that is not yours;
• Share, resell, or publish room links, counterparty details, or thread contents outside the platform without that person's consent;
• Upload or transmit malware, or attempt to probe, breach, or overload our systems or those of our providers;
• Use Maelstrom for anything unlawful, or to solicit anything unlawful, including unregistered securities offerings where registration is required;
• Harass, threaten, or discriminate against other users.

Report suspected abuse to admin@maelstrom.it.com. We investigate reports, but we do not promise any particular outcome or timeline.

8. Your content

You keep ownership of everything you write — intents, messages, room names, profile details. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, and process that content solely to operate the service: scoring your intent, generating match explanations, displaying your intent to potential counterparties, and delivering your messages. This licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies retained as described in the Privacy Policy.

You are responsible for what you write. Do not put confidential information belonging to someone else into an intent, and remember that an intent is shown to people we identify as complementary counterparties.

9. Confidentiality of threads and rooms

Match threads are private between the two matched parties. Organization administrators can see pipeline metadata for their members — how many intents are active, how many introductions are pending, how many meetings were booked — but not the contents of private messages.

These Terms do not create a confidentiality obligation between you and a counterparty. If you need one, put an NDA in place yourself.

10. Automated matching and AI

Matching is automated. We also use artificial intelligence, currently provided by Anthropic, to conduct intake conversations, structure your stated intent, answer questions about the platform, and draft introduction briefs.

AI output can be wrong, incomplete, or misleading. Match scores and explanations are our system's assessment of stated criteria, not verified facts about anyone. Review anything important yourself.

No introduction is made without your explicit acceptance, so automated scoring never by itself determines who you speak to. If you believe an automated decision has materially affected you, contact admin@maelstrom.it.com and a person will review it.

11. Organization accounts

An organization account lets a company hold one identity while each member operates a full account within it. The account owner is responsible for who they invite, for their members' use of the service, and for the organization's fees. If your access is provided through an organization, that organization's owner controls whether it continues.

Permissions. Administrators configure what each member may do through individual capability toggles — creating intents, accepting introductions, creating rooms, connecting a calendar, routing matches, viewing the pipeline, managing members, and so on. Presets exist as starting points and may be customized freely.

Managed profiles. An organization may administer members' profiles centrally, in which case an administrator sets a member's display name, picture, title, and bio rather than the member doing so. Members are told when their profile is managed. Managed status does not give administrators access to a member's private conversations, which remain confidential to the parties in them.

Match routing. A member's matches may be routed to a colleague, so that scheduling uses the destination person's calendar. Routing affects who takes the meeting; it does not transfer the conversation history of an existing thread.

Leaving an organization. When a member is removed, their intents are paused, routing pointing at them is cleared, their conversations remain with them, and their account reverts to the free tier.

11a. Identity verification

Some features and badges depend on verifying your identity through a third-party provider. You agree that the information you supply to that provider is accurate and relates to you. Attempting to verify using another person's document, or creating additional accounts to evade a limit, suspension, or verification result, is a breach of these Terms and may result in termination.

We retain only the result of a check and a one-way hash used to prevent duplicate accounts. We do not receive your document.

12. Plans, billing, and Paddle

Maelstrom offers a free tier and paid subscription plans. Current features and prices are on our pricing page. Paid plans buy capacity — more concurrent intents, more weekly introductions, priority in the match queue, room creation, and organization features. We do not sell access to particular people.

Paddle is our merchant of record. Purchases are sold to you by Paddle.com Market Limited, which processes payment, issues your invoice or receipt, and determines, collects, and remits applicable taxes. Your purchase is therefore also governed by Paddle's Buyer Terms, which you may be asked to accept at checkout.

Subscriptions renew automatically each billing period at the then-current price until cancelled. You can cancel at any time; cancellation takes effect at the end of the paid period. Team plans are billed per seat; adding seats mid-period may be charged pro rata by Paddle.

Programme member seats. A programme's organiser can buy member seats, billed per seat like Team seats, and use them to give members of their programmes the Pro plan. A sponsored seat lasts while the member stays in the programme and the organiser keeps enough seats; if the organiser reduces or cancels them, the most recently sponsored members return to their own plan first. A sponsored member is not charged, and is not owed a refund when a sponsorship ends.

Partners. Revenue shared with a programme's organiser for members it brings is set by a separate written partner agreement. Figures shown in the product are estimates from list prices; the agreement governs what is paid.

We may change prices. Changes apply from your next renewal, and we will give at least 30 days' notice by email before a price increase affects you.

Refunds are covered by our Refund Policy.

If a payment fails, Paddle will retry it. We may keep your access active during that retry period and downgrade the account to the free tier if payment is not completed.

13. Intellectual property

Maelstrom, its name, logo, interface, and underlying software are owned by Maelstrom AI Technologies, Inc. and protected by intellectual property laws. We grant you a limited, revocable, non-transferable right to use the service under these Terms. You may not copy, modify, reverse engineer, or create derivative works from the platform, or use our branding without written permission.

14. Suspension and termination

You may stop using Maelstrom at any time and may delete your account from within the app or by contacting admin@maelstrom.it.com. Deletion is described in the Privacy Policy; organization owners must transfer ownership first. We retain reports and the duplicate-prevention hash after deletion, so that a suspended account cannot simply be recreated.

We may suspend or terminate an account, remove an intent, or close a room if we reasonably believe there has been a breach of these Terms, a risk of harm to other users, fraud or chargeback abuse, or a legal requirement to do so. Where practical and lawful we will explain why and give you a chance to respond. If we terminate a paid account without cause, we will arrange a pro-rata refund of the unused portion of your current period through Paddle.

Sections 6, 8, 15, 16, 17, and 18 survive termination.

15. Disclaimers

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Maelstrom is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any warranty arising from course of dealing or usage of trade.

We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free, that matching will be accurate or produce results, or that any user is who they claim to be.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you. Nothing here limits rights you have as a consumer that cannot be waived under applicable law.

16. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Maelstrom AI Technologies, Inc. and its officers, employees, and suppliers will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost business, lost data, lost opportunities, or losses arising from your dealings with another user — including any fraud, misrepresentation, breach, or failed transaction involving a counterparty you met through Maelstrom.

Our total aggregate liability for all claims relating to the service is limited to the greater of (a) the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) one hundred US dollars.

These limits apply even if a remedy fails of its essential purpose, and regardless of the theory of liability. Nothing in these Terms excludes liability for fraud, death or personal injury caused by negligence, or anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.

17. Indemnification

You will indemnify and hold harmless Maelstrom AI Technologies, Inc. from claims, damages, losses, and reasonable legal fees arising from your use of the service, your content, your breach of these Terms, or your dealings with another user.

18. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois, United States, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. You and we agree to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in Illinois for any dispute that is not resolved informally, except that either party may seek injunctive relief in any competent court to protect intellectual property or confidential information.

Before filing anything, please contact admin@maelstrom.it.com — most disputes are resolved faster in an inbox than a courtroom.

If you are a consumer resident in the EU, UK, or another jurisdiction whose law grants you the right to bring proceedings locally or to rely on mandatory local consumer protections, this section does not remove those rights. Your purchase relationship with Paddle is separately governed by Paddle's own terms.

22. Changes to these terms

Maelstrom is under active development and these Terms will expand as features are added. We will post the updated version here with a new version number and effective date. For material changes affecting your rights, we will give at least 30 days' notice by email or in-app before they take effect. Continuing to use the service after that means you accept the updated Terms.

23. Contact

Maelstrom AI Technologies, Inc.
300 Creek View Road, Newark, DE 19711
Email: admin@maelstrom.it.com
Phone: 630-649-9958 (Text Only)

Version history

• 3.1 — 31 October 2026 — Updated what verification badges mean, to match how verification now works (public company registers; no Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 route). Added programme member seats and partner revenue share.
• 3.0 — 8 September 2026 — Added attachments, notification settings, and pausing.
• 2.9 — 7 September 2026 — Added relationship notes and session management.
• 2.8 — 7 September 2026 — Added the data export.
• 2.7 — 7 September 2026 — Added account recovery.
• 2.6 — 7 September 2026 — Added email suppression and sign-in rate limits.
• 2.5 — 7 September 2026 — Added feedback-driven adjustments; we propose, you decide.
• 2.4 — 5 September 2026 — Added private match outcome feedback.
• 2.3 — 5 September 2026 — Added intent freshness: intents are paused, never deleted, after an unanswered check.
• 2.2 — 5 September 2026 — Added invitation terms, limits, and the permanent decline.
• 2.1 — 5 September 2026 — Added being notified when a counterpart appears.
• 2.0 — 2 September 2026 — Added the app directory and what listing does and does not mean, plus per-app allowance limits.
• 1.9 — 2 September 2026 — Added terms for connected apps and for publishing an OAuth application.
• 1.8 — 2 September 2026 — Added Developer API terms: scoped keys, allowances, and the rule that metered usage is opt-in.
• 1.7 — 1 September 2026 — Added no-show compensation credits.
• 1.6 — 1 September 2026 — Added relationship archiving after inactivity, intent pausing for inactive accounts, and attendance reporting.
• 1.5 — 1 September 2026 — Added the Counterparts relationship view and user-configurable reschedule notice and limits.
• 1.4 — 1 September 2026 — Added rescheduling and cancellation, calendar files, and opt-in calendar event writing.
• 1.3 — 31 August 2026 — Added read-only exploration and the identity gate on interaction, scheduling and meeting proposals, reporting, and vouching.
• 1.2 — 29 August 2026 — Added organization permissions, managed profiles, match routing, member removal, profile customization and privacy, and identity verification.
• 1.1 — 29 August 2026 — Added calendar connections and clarified precisely what each verification tier does and does not establish.
• 1.0 — 29 August 2026 — Initial publication. Covers intents, double opt-in matching, rooms, anonymous intents, organization accounts, AI processing, and Paddle billing.