AI-powered and millennial favourite, Cleo raises $10m

The digital financial assistant designed to help millennials look after their money has closed its Series A investment round led by Balderton Capital and LocalGlobe.

Digital finance app Cleo has seen a  $10m Series A investment from Balderton Capital, Niklas Zennström, founder of Skype, and Taavet Hinrikus, founder of TransferWise.

Cleo is now set to launch its own range of financial products and this new round of funding will enable it to scale globally, it said in a release. The app launched 18 months ago with the goal of shifting young people’s relationship with their money and has seen rapid uptake among millennials. It has 600,000 users across the UK, US and Canada, with 30,000 a week signing up in the US, it says.

Cleo offers personalised insight via spending data and Facebook Messenger with 94 per cent of users being aged under-35. Designed to help young people save, Cleo sets targets, tracks your spending, puts away savings automatically.

Barney Hussey-Yeo, the firm’s CEO  says that from overdraft fees to credit cards, the traditional range of financial products doesn’t work for this generation.

“The model of retail banking is not set up for the people it serves. Cleo’s changing that.” The company will continue to expand internationally, following a successful launch in North America in April 2018, which saw 350,000 people sign up within four months.”

Hussey-Yeo believes there’s an arms race going on to become the financial interface for this generation.

“A Google-size company will emerge in the next five years that achieves that.”