Company: Cleo
Founder(s): Barnaby Hussey-Yeo
Website: https://www.meetcleo.com
Business: An A.I. assistant for your money, securely connecting your bank account and allowing you to keep track of your spending, budgets, bills and much more.
About Cleo
Cleo is a free service and aims to help people better manage their finances. When you connect Cleo to your bank account, the AI digital assistant analyses your spending patterns. It then uses its intelligence to tell you about your finances. The chatbot gives you insights into your spending across multiple accounts and credit cards, broken down by transaction, category or merchant and notifies you when your balance is low.
Additionally, Cleo helps you put money aside or save for a specific goal, send money to your Facebook Messenger contacts, give donations to charity and set spending alerts. You can also ask her questions, and she’ll provide you with advice, such as how much should I spend on dinner? Am I overspending on my credit card? Or even, is this the correct mortgage for me?
Machine learning technology is fundamental to Cleo. The AI app uses natural language processing, which takes in the unstructured text of somebody’s request and creates the correct intelligent response.
The fintech also offers Cleo Plus, a subscription product which provides even more support to your finances. The premium service presents a range of features, including rewards and an optional £100 cash advance as an alternative to going into your overdraft. The Cleo platform uses bank-level encryption and will never save or sell any of your information. Nevertheless, your bank account is still backed by a $250k guarantee to cover you should the unthinkable happen.
Cleo has raised a total of $13.3 million in funding over four rounds. Their latest funding was raised in June 2019 from a Debt Financing round by TriplePoint Capital. Alongside TriplePoint, some of the biggest VC firms in London’s tech scene back Cleo, including Entrepreneur First, Balderton Capital, LocalGlobe, Octopus Investments, Y Combinator, Index Ventures.
Additionally, Moonfruit co-founders Wendy Tan White and Joe White, Skype founder Niklas Zennström, Wonga founder Errol Damelin and TransferWise founder Taavet Hinrikus have invested in Cleo.
