Terms of Service

Version 1.0 · Effective 28 September 2026 · AltaMind Technologies, Burnaby, British Columbia

1. Who we are, and what these terms cover
2. The Service
3. Your account and API keys
4. Plans, allowances and limits
5. Billing, cancellation and refunds
6. Acceptable use
7. Your content and the model's output
8. Privacy
9. Availability and changes
10. No warranty
11. Limitation of liability
12. Suspension and termination
13. General

1. Who we are, and what these terms cover

AltaMind Technologies ("AltaMind", "we", "us") is a business registered in British Columbia, Canada (registration FM1119348), operated by Zhouwu Huang from Burnaby, BC. These terms are an agreement between AltaMind and the organisation or person that subscribes to or uses the Service ("you").

They cover the AltaMind Private AI API at api.altamind.ca, the free "try it" box and signup pages on altamind.ca, and the welcome and billing pages that go with a subscription (together, the "Service"). Consulting engagements are covered by their own written agreement, not by these terms.

If you subscribe on behalf of an organisation, you confirm you have the authority to bind it, and "you" means that organisation.

Where you send us personal information about other people, the Data Processing Addendum also applies and forms part of these terms.

2. The Service

The Service is an HTTP API, compatible with the OpenAI chat completions format, that runs an open-weight language model on hardware we own and operate in British Columbia. You send text (a "prompt"); the model returns text (an "output"). The public model name is altamind-chat. We may change the underlying model, and will keep the name and the API format stable so your integration keeps working.

The free "try it" box on altamind.ca is part of the Service. It needs no account, is limited per visitor and per day, and may be changed or withdrawn at any time.

3. Your account and API keys

1. Subscribing creates a client record under the company name and email you give at checkout. Keep the email current; it's where we send billing and service notices.
2. Your API key is shown once, on the welcome page. Only a hash of it is stored on our side, so it cannot be recovered. If it's lost, we revoke it and issue a new one.
3. Keys are secrets. Don't publish them, embed them in client-side code, or share them outside your organisation. You're responsible for all usage under your key until you tell us it's compromised, at which point we revoke it immediately.
4. One subscription is for one organisation. Reselling access, or sharing a key between separate organisations, needs a written agreement with us first.

4. Plans, allowances and limits

Each plan includes a monthly token allowance and limits on concurrent requests and requests per minute. The current plans and their prices are on the pricing page; the plan you chose, and its allowance, are on your welcome page and in your confirmation email.

1. Tokens are counted as the model counts them, for both the prompt and the output combined. You can see your current usage at GET /v1/usage.
2. The allowance resets on the first day of each calendar month (UTC). It doesn't carry over, and it doesn't align to your billing date.
3. When an allowance or a rate limit is reached, the API returns an error (HTTP 429) until the limit clears. Nothing extra is charged.
4. We may set a maximum output length per request and a maximum request size, and may adjust these to keep the Service responsive for everyone.
5. You may change plan at any time from the billing portal. Upgrades take effect immediately and the difference is prorated; downgrades take effect at the end of the current billing period.

5. Billing, cancellation and refunds

1. Prices are in Canadian dollars. Applicable taxes are added at checkout.
2. Subscriptions are billed monthly in advance by card through Stripe, and renew automatically each month until cancelled. Stripe emails a receipt for each payment.
3. If a payment fails, Stripe retries it and emails you a link to update your card. If it still can't be collected, the subscription is cancelled and the key stops working.
4. Cancelling: cancel at any time from the billing portal (linked on your welcome page and in your confirmation email). Your key keeps working until the end of the period you've paid for; no further charges are made.
5. 14-day refund: if the Service isn't a fit, email us within 14 days of your first payment and we'll refund that payment in full and close the subscription. This applies once per organisation, to the first month of a first subscription.
6. Apart from that, payments are non-refundable, including for months you didn't use the allowance. If we terminate your subscription for our own convenience (not for a breach), we refund the unused part of the current month.
7. Promotion codes, including pilot codes, are subject to the limits shown when the code is issued.

6. Acceptable use

You may use the Service for any lawful purpose, with these exceptions. You must not:

1. send content you don't have the right to send, or process personal information you don't have the authority to process;
2. use the Service to break the law, to harass or defraud, to generate malware, or to produce content that is illegal in Canada;
3. use it for decisions with legal or similarly significant effects on people (credit, employment, housing, medical treatment) without meaningful human review of every output;
4. use it to build a service that competes with the model itself by extracting its weights or systematically harvesting outputs for training;
5. probe, overload or interfere with the Service, or try to get around a limit, a revoked key or a suspended account;
6. use it in a way that violates the use restrictions of the model's licence. The model is an open-weight model released under its publisher's terms and prohibited-use policy, which we pass through to you; we'll tell you which model is in use and where its policy is published on request.

7. Your content and the model's output

1. You own your prompts. You own the outputs the model returns to you, to the extent the law allows ownership of machine-generated text. We claim no rights in either.
2. We don't use your prompts or outputs to train, fine-tune or evaluate models, and we don't sell or share them. We don't look at them, except where you ask us to for support, or where the law requires it.
3. Language models make mistakes: they state things confidently that are wrong, they miss things, and their output can reflect biases in their training data. Outputs are not legal, medical, financial or professional advice. You are responsible for reviewing outputs before relying on them or passing them to others.
4. Similar prompts from different customers can produce similar outputs. Outputs are not exclusive to you.

8. Privacy

This section is our privacy policy for the Service. For the detailed processing commitments that apply when you send us personal information about other people, see the Data Processing Addendum.

What we don't keep. Prompts and outputs are processed in memory on our hardware in British Columbia and are not written to disk, logged, or retained after the response is sent. The same is true for the free "try it" box.

What we keep, and why.

Account data

Company name, contact email, plan, and the Stripe customer and subscription identifiers. Needed to run your subscription and to contact you about it.

Usage records

For each API request: the time, the key used, the prompt and output token counts, response time and status code. Never the text. Needed for the monthly allowance, for billing and for keeping the Service healthy.

Key fingerprints

A one-way hash of each API key, so we can check a key without storing it.

Try-it counters

The visitor's IP address, kept in memory only, to enforce the daily free-call limit. Not written to disk.

Website

Static pages served through Cloudflare. We don't set tracking cookies. If we add analytics, it will be cookie-less and aggregate, and this section will say so.

Email

Messages you send to info@altamind.ca, and our replies, kept as ordinary business correspondence.

Retention. Account data and usage records are kept while you're a subscriber and for as long afterwards as tax and record-keeping law requires (in Canada, generally up to seven years for billing records). Email correspondence is kept as long as it's relevant to the relationship.

Who else touches the data. Stripe (payments; your card details go to Stripe, never to us), Resend (sends the confirmation email), Cloudflare (network: API traffic passes through Cloudflare's network, encrypted end to end, on its way to our hardware), and Zoho (hosts our info@ mailbox). Each acts under its own privacy terms and only for the purpose named.

Where. Model processing happens in British Columbia. Cloudflare, Stripe, Resend and Zoho operate globally; the data that reaches them is the categories listed above, not your prompts or outputs.

Your rights. You can ask what personal information we hold about you, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, and withdraw consent where consent is the basis. Email info@altamind.ca. We answer within 30 days. Zhouwu Huang is the person responsible for privacy at AltaMind. If you're not satisfied with our answer you can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, or the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia.

9. Availability and changes

1. The Service runs on a single monitored machine and is offered on a best-effort basis, without an uptime commitment. It restarts itself after a power loss. Planned maintenance is announced by email when it will take more than a few minutes.
2. We may change the model, the limits in section 4, or features of the Service. Changes that reduce what your plan includes, or that break API compatibility, are announced by email at least 30 days in advance.
3. We may change these terms. We'll email you at least 30 days before a change takes effect, unless the change is required by law or only makes the terms clearer. Continuing to use the Service after that date is acceptance; if you don't accept, cancel before the date and section 5 applies.

10. No warranty

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy of outputs, and uninterrupted or error-free operation. Nothing in these terms limits rights that consumer protection law gives you and that can't be limited by contract.

11. Limitation of liability

1. Neither of us is liable to the other for indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, revenue, data or goodwill, however it arises.
2. Our total liability to you under or in connection with these terms, in any twelve-month period, is limited to the fees you paid us for the Service in the three months before the event that gave rise to the claim.
3. These limits don't apply to liability that can't be limited by law, to either party's breach of section 6 or of the confidentiality obligations in the DPA, or to fraud.
4. You will defend and indemnify us against third-party claims arising from content you send to the Service or from your use of outputs, except to the extent we caused the claim.

12. Suspension and termination

1. You can end this agreement at any time by cancelling under section 5.
2. We may suspend a key or an account immediately if we reasonably believe it's compromised, is being used in breach of section 6, or is putting the Service at risk. We tell you why, and lift the suspension once the issue is resolved.
3. We may terminate for a breach that isn't fixed within 14 days of notice, or for non-payment under section 5. We may also terminate for convenience with 30 days' notice, refunding the unused part of the current month.
4. On termination your key stops working. Account data is handled as described in section 8 and the DPA.

13. General

1. Law and courts. These terms are governed by the laws of British Columbia and the federal laws of Canada that apply there. The courts of British Columbia have exclusive jurisdiction, and each of us agrees to it.
2. Whole agreement. These terms, the DPA and the plan details on your welcome page are the whole agreement for the Service. A separate signed agreement (for example, for a dedicated deployment) takes priority over these terms where they conflict.
3. Notices to you go to your account email; notices to us go to info@altamind.ca.
4. Assignment. You may not assign this agreement without our consent. We may assign it to a successor of the business, and will tell you if we do.
5. Severability. If a part of these terms is unenforceable, the rest still applies.
6. Language. These terms are written in English. The parties have expressly requested that this agreement and all related documents be drawn up in English. Les parties ont expressément demandé que la présente convention et tous les documents connexes soient rédigés en anglais.