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IBL News | New York
Cluely, the controversial startup that provides AI tools to “cheat on everything” regarding marketing or job interviews, reported a skyrocketed revenue of $7 million in ARR in the last weeks, making the company profitable.
It recently obtained funding from big-league VCs like Andreessen Horowitz, Abstract Ventures, and Susa Ventures, and toned down its marketing to “Everything You Need. Before You Ask, this feels like cheating.”
It offers an AI tool that, after analyzing online conversations, delivers real-time notes and suggests questions to ask by discreetly displaying the information on the user’s screen, invisible to others.
For weeks leading up to the product reveal, Lee boasted that the company’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) exceeded $3 million and that the startup was profitable.
Cluely itself was born of controversy after its founder posted in a viral X thread saying Columbia University suspended him because he and a co-founder developed a tool to cheat on job interviews for software engineers.
The enterprise version of the product emphasizes the usefulness of taking notes during online conversations. This real-time notetaker is similar to the consumer offering, but it comes with additional features, including team management and enhanced security settings.
The feature has been copied by other companies, such as Glass, which offers an open-source, free product with very similar functionality to Cluely.
I just got kicked out of Columbia for taking a stand against Leetcode interviews.
Here’s the whole story (long thread): pic.twitter.com/Q7LPWjwyA7
— Roy (@im_roy_lee) March 27, 2025
