Barney Hussey-Yeo built Cleo in his bedroom and had launched it when he finished the Entrepreneur First programme in March 2016. The first product was a chatbot that read bank data and joked about spending.
LocalGlobe led a £2 million round in 2017. Cleo launched in the US in 2019, and daily signups rose from about 1,000 in the UK to about 10,000 within a week. Better US bank APIs such as Plaid made connecting an account easy.
EQT Ventures led a US$44 million Series B in December 2020, when Cleo had 4 million users and more than US$10 million in annual recurring revenue. Balderton, LocalGlobe and SBI also took part.
Revenue rose from US$65.9 million to US$135.7 million in 2024, with a pre-tax loss of US$769,000. In 2025 Cleo launched Cleo 3.0, a voice AI coach. In February 2026 the company announced US$185 million in annual recurring revenue.