Privacy Policy

kernous Inc (the “Company,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) is committed to maintaining robust privacy protections for its users. This Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy”) is designed to help you understand how we collect, use, and safeguard the information you provide to us and to assist you in making informed decisions when using our Service.

“Site” refers to the Company’s website at www.kernous.com. “Service” refers to kernous: a real-time AI coaching layer for live customer conversations — listening to your calls, surfacing the next best line, objection handler, or knowledge moment in under a second, and producing a post-call coaching report. “You” refers to you, as a user of our Site or Service.

By accessing our Site or Service, you accept this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Service, and you consent to our collection, storage, use, and disclosure of your Personal Information as described here.

We collect both “Non-Personal Information” (anonymous usage data, referring/exit pages, browser and device type, and other data that does not identify you) and “Personal Information.” The Personal Information we collect includes:

• Name — so we can personalize your account and coaching reports.
• Email address — for sign-in, account recovery, and service communications.
• Password — stored only as a salted cryptographic hash — we never see your plaintext password.
• Stripe billing metadata — such as plan, billing address, and the last four digits of your card (full card numbers are handled by Stripe, not kernous).
• Call audio you submit — the live audio streamed to kernous during a coaching session.
• Call transcripts — the text produced from that audio by our speech-to-text providers.
• Knowledge base documents you upload — the files you add so the AI can ground its suggestions in your own material.
• Integration credentials — tokens and keys for any third-party services you choose to connect.

We use your information to provide and improve the Service: to transcribe and analyze your calls, generate live coaching suggestions and post-call reports, authenticate you, process payments, respond to support requests, and send you service and (where permitted) promotional communications.

We do not sell, rent, or trade your Personal Information. We share it only with the subprocessors listed below, who act on our behalf and under contract; when you direct us to (for example, connecting an integration); or when reasonably necessary to comply with law, enforce our Terms of Service, or protect the rights, property, or safety of our users or the public. In the event of a merger, acquisition, or asset sale, your information may be among the assets transferred, subject to this Privacy Policy.

We rely on the following third-party subprocessors to operate the Service. Each receives only the data it needs for its specific function, and each is bound by contract to process that data solely on our instructions.

• Your live call audio is processed in real time by our speech-to-text providers — Deepgram, or Doubao (ByteDance) for Chinese and region-restricted users — to produce a transcript the coaching layer can act on. Routing depends on your region and language.
• When you opt in to store audio, the stored audio lives in Supabase storage. You can delete it yourself at any time from the Coach Report page.
• kernous does not use your audio or transcripts to train AI models.
• Consent is your responsibility. kernous is used in jurisdictions with two-party (all-party) consent laws — including California, Florida, Maryland, Washington, and Massachusetts, as well as parts of the EU and Japan, among others. It is your responsibility to obtain consent from all participants before recording or processing a call. kernous can display a session-start disclosure banner, but giving the verbal disclosure to call participants remains your duty.

• kernous does not train AI models on customer-provided data — including your call audio, transcripts, or knowledge base documents.
• Our LLM providers (OpenAI and Anthropic) are configured under their “no training” data processing agreements where such terms are available, so the prompts and transcript snippets we send for inference are not used to train their models.

We keep personal information only as long as needed for the purposes described in this Policy:

• Account data — kept while your account is active and for 90 days after deletion, then permanently deleted.
• Call audio — kept as long as the session record exists; deletable by you from the Coach Report page; purged within 30 days of session deletion.
• Transcripts — same lifecycle as call audio.
• Coach reports — kept as long as the session record exists.
• Billing records — retained for 7 years to meet tax and compliance obligations.
• Logs (HTTP, error) — retained for 30 days.

Wherever you are, you have the following rights:

• Right to access — request a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Right to delete — delete your account and associated data from the Settings page, or by emailing us.
• Right to data portability — export your call history and Coach Reports.
• Right to opt out of marketing — unsubscribe from promotional email at any time from the Settings page.

California residents (CCPA). You have the right to know what personal information we collect, the right to delete it, and the right not to be discriminated against for exercising your rights. We do not sell personal information.

EU/EEA residents (GDPR). Our lawful bases for processing are your consent (when you create an account), performance of our contract with you (to provide the Service), and our legitimate interests (security and analytics). Your data is processed in the United States; where required, we rely on Standard Contractual Clauses with our EU subprocessors.

To exercise any of these rights, use the Settings page or email us at kelvin@kernous.com.

kernous Inc is based in San Francisco, California, United States, and your data is processed in the United States. If you access the Service from outside the United States, you understand your information will be transferred to, stored, and processed there. For users in the EU/EEA, we put Standard Contractual Clauses in place with our subprocessors to safeguard those transfers.

We implement technical and organizational measures designed to protect your information from unauthorized access, including encryption in transit, access controls, and hardened infrastructure provided by our hosting and database subprocessors. Your account is protected by your password — keep it confidential and sign out after use. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure, and by using the Service you acknowledge this residual risk.

We use a small number of cookies and similar technologies. The ones we set are:

• Authentication session token — keeps you signed in to your account.
• Language preference (NEXT_LOCALE) — remembers which language you chose.
• PostHog distinct_id — links product-analytics events to a single (pseudonymous) user.
• Google Analytics client ID — measures usage of our public marketing pages.

The Site and Service are not directed to anyone under the age of 16, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If we learn we have collected such information without verified parental or guardian consent, we will delete it as soon as possible. Parents or guardians may contact kelvin@kernous.com to request deletion of any data we may have collected from a minor.

The Service may link to or integrate with third-party websites and applications. We are not responsible for their privacy practices, and this Privacy Policy applies solely to information collected through our Site and Service. We encourage you to read the privacy statements of any third-party services you use.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of significant changes by email to the address on your account or by posting a prominent notice on the Site; significant changes take effect 30 days after notification, while non-material clarifications take effect immediately. Please check this page periodically for updates.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our practices, contact us at kelvin@kernous.com, or by mail at:

kernous Inc
2261 Market Street STE 77353, San Francisco, California 94114