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Announcement

Compliant AI starts before the cloud.

Today we announced ZeroH Disclosure, the patent-pending privacy and proof platform that lets regulated institutions use AI without surrendering control of sensitive data. Ask Ali, our Shariah Governance AI co-pilot, is the first product on it.

Blade Labs

April 30, 2026

The thesis

Most AI deployments in regulated finance enforce data policies inside the cloud, after the data has already left the institution. ZeroH Disclosure inverts that sequence: the institution’s policy is applied at the prompt boundary, on the user’s device, before any data reaches an external AI service. Each disclosure produces a cryptographic record stamped inside the institution’s sovereign region. Management, Shariah boards, auditors, and regulators can independently verify what was disclosed, to whom, and under which policy.

Why this matters now

Three forces are converging. Data sovereignty laws (Qatar PDPPL, GDPR, equivalents across the GCC) increasingly require provable in-region processing. Privacy regulations and AI governance frameworks demand evidence that policy was actually applied. And in Islamic finance, Shariah governance requires that compliance is demonstrably followed, not merely claimed. All three demand the same thing: cryptographic proof that institutional policy ran before the data moved.

What we built

ZeroH Disclosure is the patent-pending privacy and proof platform that satisfies all three. It runs the institution’s disclosure policy client-side, masks sensitive fields before they leave the device, sends only the redacted prompt onward to an external AI, and stamps a hash of every disclosure to a permissioned DLT inside the sovereign region. UK patent application GB2604344.8, filed 27 February 2026, covers the cryptographic disclosure architecture.

The first product on it: Ask Ali

Ask Ali is an AI co-pilot for Islamic finance compliance, product, and Shariah governance teams. Every answer cites its source (AAOIFI/IFSB standard, clause, and version). The four major madhahib (Hanafi, Shafi‘i, Maliki, Hanbali) are presented side by side. Every analysis maps to the five Maqasid al-Shariah objectives. And because Ali is built on ZeroH Disclosure, the model never sees raw sensitive data — only redacted tokens. The audit trail is produced as a byproduct, not assembled at the last minute when a regulator asks.

Where it ships first

Qatar. The QFC Digital Assets Lab is where ZeroH Disclosure was developed and validated, and the architecture builds directly on the Digital Receipt System POC Blade Labs delivered with Al Rayan Bank in September 2025. Qatar National Vision 2030 places digital financial services at the centre of the country’s economic diversification, and the launch jurisdiction reflects that. The same architecture is designed to extend to any regulated workflow where verifiable disclosure is required — banking, insurance, healthcare, legal services, and beyond.

External validation

The ZeroH platform methodology that Ali is built on holds a full fatwa pronouncement from Amanie Advisors (April 2025). Blade Labs holds SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001:2022, and GDPR compliance, all in place since 2023. The company won the FinoPitch International Grand Prize 2025 in Tokyo and the Islamic Fintech Awards 2025 in Dubai, is a Qatar Development Bank portfolio company, and is registered at the Qatar Financial Centre.

What happens next

The public preview of Ask Ali opens to anyone who would like to test it on 4 May 2026 at zeroh.io/ask-ali. Institutional teams — Shariah boards, compliance teams, product teams at Islamic banks, fintechs operating under dual mandate, scholars, and auditors — can talk to us directly via the form on the Ask Ali page for a tailored briefing and walkthrough. The press kit, with full media assets and the press release PDF, is available at zeroh.io/press/ask-ali-launch.

Frequently asked questions

ZeroH Disclosure, a patent-pending privacy and proof platform that applies institutional disclosure policy at the prompt boundary before any data reaches an external AI service. The first product built on it is Ask Ali, an AI co-pilot for Islamic finance compliance, product, and Shariah governance teams. The public preview opens on 4 May 2026 at zeroh.io/ask-ali.

Most AI deployments enforce data policies inside the cloud, after the data has already left the institution. ZeroH Disclosure inverts the sequence: the institutions disclosure policy is applied first (on-device PII detection and masking), data moves only after enforcement, and each disclosure produces a cryptographic record that auditors and regulators can independently verify. The phrase captures the architectural commitment: enforcement before transit.

Generic redaction pipelines run inside the AI vendor cloud or as a server-side proxy, which means the original data has already crossed the institutional boundary by the time anything is masked. ZeroH Disclosure runs the policy client-side, on the institutions device, so the original prompt never leaves. The redacted prompt and a cryptographic proof of disclosure are what move onward.

Islamic finance carries the highest compliance and fairness bar in regulated finance: Shariah governance, AAOIFI standards, multi-madhahib jurisprudence, Maqasid al-Shariah mapping, plus the same data sovereignty laws and privacy regulations every regulated bank faces. If we can build for this environment, we can build for any regulated workflow. Launch jurisdiction is Qatar, deliberately, given the Qatar National Vision 2030 commitment to digital financial services.

The public preview opens to anyone who would like to test it on 4 May 2026 at zeroh.io/ask-ali. Professionals and institutions inside Islamic finance — Shariah boards, compliance teams, product teams at Islamic banks, fintechs operating under dual mandate, scholars, and auditors — can talk to us directly via the form on the Ask Ali page for a tailored briefing and walkthrough.

ZeroH Disclosure was developed inside the QFC Digital Assets Lab. The lab is the QFCs innovation testing environment, designed to validate next-generation financial technologies before they reach the broader market. The architecture announced today builds on the Digital Receipt System POC Blade Labs delivered with Al Rayan Bank in September 2025.

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