On Sunday, 21-year-old Chungin “Roy” Lee said that he had secured $5.3 million in initial investment from Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures for his firm, Cluely, which provides an AI platform designed to facilitate academic cheating.
The firm emerged after Lee’s popular post on X, in which he revealed his suspension from Columbia University after he and his co-founder created a program designed to facilitate cheating in software engineering job interviews.
The technology, formerly known as Interview Coder, is now integrated into their San Francisco-based firm, Cluely. It provides users the opportunity to “cheat” on examinations, sales calls, and job interviews using a concealed in-browser window that remains invisible to the interviewer or examiner.
Cluely has released a manifesto likening itself to discoveries such as the calculator and spellcheck, which were once criticized as “cheating.”
Cluely released a polished but divisive launch video featuring Lee using a concealed AI helper to ineffectively deceive a lady about his age and art expertise during a date at an exclusive restaurant.
Some commended the ad for capturing attention, but others criticized it as evocative of the dystopian sci-fi series “Black Mirror.”
Envision creating a Black Mirror-inspired short film as a promotional advertisement.
Lee, the CEO of Cluely, told TechCrunch that the AI cheating tool exceeded $3 million in annual recurring revenue earlier this month.
The startup’s second co-founder, 21-year-old former Columbia student Neel Shanmugam, serves as Cluely’s COO. Shanmugam was also involved in disciplinary procedures at Columbia over the AI tool.
Both co-founders have withdrawn from Columbia, as reported by the university’s student publication last week. Columbia refrained from commenting, citing student privacy legislation.
Cluely originated as a resource for developers to circumvent the need of mastering LeetCode, a platform for coding challenges that many individuals within software engineering, including Cluely’s creators, deem antiquated and unproductive.
Lee claims he secured an internship with Amazon with the AI cheating technology.
Amazon refrained from commenting on Lee’s specific situation to TechCrunch, but said that its job applicants must recognize that they would not use unapproved technologies during the interview process.
Cluely is hardly the only contentious AI company introduced this month. A prominent AI researcher recently unveiled his firm, which aims to replace all human labor globally, causing much controversy on X.
