Columbia’s suspended student startup Cluely- an AI tool to “cheat on everything” raises $5.3M in seed funding

Remember the sci-fi anthology series, Black Mirror, that debuted in 2011. The show warned viewers about surveillance, consumerism, AI, social media, data privacy, and more. Well, reminding you about the show, there is now a San-Francisco-based startup, Cluely, that offers an AI tool to cheat on everything.

Interesting part is this startup was founded by 21 year old Chungin Roy Lee, who himself was suspended by Columbia University. Lee posted a thread on the X platform in which he mentioned that the startup was born after Columbia University suspended him after he and his co-founder developed a tool (originally called Interview Coder) to cheat on job interviews for software engineer internships in companies like Meta, TikTok, Capital One, and Amazon.

I just got kicked out of Columbia for taking a stand against Leetcode interviews.

Here's the whole story (long thread): pic.twitter.com/Q7LPWjwyA7

— Roy (@im_roy_lee) March 27, 2025

Lee has also recorded the entire Amazon process using the tool and posted the video as well, but then an Amazon executive came across the viral video and sent a disciplinary notice to Columbia for expelling the kid.

The other co-founder of this startup 21-year-old former Columbia student, Neel Shanmugam (Cluely COO), was also involved in disciplinary proceedings at Columbia over the AI tool.

It was revealed that Lee raised $5.3M in seed funding from Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures for the startup. The AI cheating tool surpassed $3M in ARR earlier this month. The AI tool offers its users the chance to cheat on exams, sales calls, meetings, interviews, and negotiations with the help of a hidden in-browser window that can’t be viewed by the interviewer or test giver.

Cluely has also published a manifesto in which it has compared itself to the calculator, spellcheck, and Google, which was also called cheaters earlier.