Cluely Ceo Roy Lee Admits To Publicly Lying About Revenue Numbers Last Year

The $7 cardinal successful yearly recurring revenue that Cluely co-founder and CEO Roy Lee shared pinch TechCrunch past summertime was a lie, Lee admitted connected Thursday connected X. Wrote Lee, this “is nan only blatantly dishonest point i’ve said publically online, truthful this is my general retraction.”

Yet his station connected X besides misrepresents nan backstory of really and why he told TechCrunch his ARR successful nan first place.

Lee says successful that aforesaid station that he “got a random acold telephone from immoderate female asking astir numbers and told her immoderate bs, did not expect an article astir it.”

But that telephone occurred because Cluely’s nationalist relations typical emailed TechCrunch and offered to make Lee disposable for a story. On Friday, Jun 27, 2025 astatine 8:38 a.m., Cluely’s PR personification sent an email to TechCrunch newsman Marina Temkin that said, “I’d emotion to put an question and reply pinch Roy. Whether for a deeper dive into Cluely’s adjacent shape aliases a caller perspective connected his vision, we’d beryllium happy to make it happen.”

Temkin agreed. The PR typical shared Lee’s number and confirmed that he was expecting nan call. After a fewer attempts to scope him, Lee answered nan telephone and gave nan interview, arsenic had been arranged.

TechCrunch was willing successful talking to Cluely because successful nan summertime of 2025, Cluely was nan “cheat-on-everything” arena — a viral startup that fto users secretly look up answers during video calls without being detected. The institution was founded aft Lee published a viral station connected X saying he had been suspended by Columbia University aft he and his co-founder developed a instrumentality to cheat connected occupation interviews for package engineers.

The co-founders raised $5.3 cardinal successful seed backing from Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures for Cluely, intending to commercialize nan instrumentality that sewage them suspended. It was positioned arsenic allowing online interviewees (or anyone) to secretly look up answers to questions without detection. For a while, it seemed for illustration Cluely would go truthful successful that it would spawn a counter-industry of discovery tools designed to drawback group utilizing it.

In June, Cluely raised a $15 cardinal Series A from Andreessen Horowitz. By then, nan institution had mastered nan creation of creating provocative contented designed to spell viral utilizing stunts and outrageous claims to support Cluely successful nan headlines and pull caller users. The strategy was nan talk of nan town. Lee moreover discussed really successful rage-bait trading strategies were for gaining early customers astatine TechCrunch’s 2025 Disrupt arena successful October.

He declined to stock updated gross numbers astatine that time, but he did bespeak that trading alone, erstwhile a merchandise is still successful flux, isn’t capable to build a sustainable business. “What I’ve learned is you should ne'er stock gross numbers,” he told nan Disrupt audience.

Cluely has since rebranded itself arsenic an AI-powered gathering note-taker. But successful admitting nan dishonesty and posting numbers from his Stripe account, Lee appears to person forgotten his ain advice.