Cleo, a London-based startup that offers an AI chatbot to help handle and manage finances, raised £2 million in a round led by LocalGlobe with participation from existing investors.
Cleo grabbed the attention of various successful companies and individuals including Skype founder Niklas Zennström. Cleo is essentially a digital financial assistant, powered by artificial intelligence in the form of a chatbot via Facebook Messenger. Cleo offers a “conversational interface and, in lots of ways, is a replacement for your existing bank’s apps, enabling you to ask for insights into all of all your spending across multiple accounts and credit cards, broken down by transaction, category or merchant, once you give Cleo permission to access that data.”
The program also allows users to send money to Facebook contacts without having the drag of logging into their online bank account, but instead, can send it freely with a single-click after linking their credit or debit card to the app. Cleo also offers the service of automatically putting aside a calculated percentage of money in one’s savings account, and gives insight for better options concerning utilities and credit card vendors.
Cleo co-founder Barney Hussey-Yeo made the following statement about the competitive field of fintech startups:
“Everyone is racing to the same goal… There is a s*** ton of VC money going into the space, the best investors in the world. Everyone knows that a huge company will come out the other side, [but] it’s all to play for.”
Although Cleo seems like the ideal replacement for banking-apps, there will be those who question the safety of the app and potential technological errors that the program may cause. Of course, this is the transition toward a more “AI-based society,” and if Cleo can offer its services without fault, it may be the answer we are all looking for.
Mohammad Sultani for TechFunnel.com
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