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 with TechCrunch past summertime was a lie, Lee admitted connected Thursday connected X. Wrote Lee, this “is the lone blatantly dishonest happening i’ve said publically online, truthful this is my ceremonial retraction.”

Yet his station connected X besides misrepresents the backstory of however and wherefore helium told TechCrunch his ARR successful the archetypal place.

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

But that telephone occurred due to the fact that Cluely’s nationalist relations typical emailed TechCrunch and offered to marque Lee disposable for a story. On Friday, Jun 27, 2025 astatine 8:38 a.m., Cluely’s PR idiosyncratic sent an email to TechCrunch newsman Marina Temkin that said, “I’d emotion to put an interrogation with Roy. Whether for a deeper dive into Cluely’s adjacent signifier oregon a caller space connected his vision, we’d beryllium blessed to marque it happen.”

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

TechCrunch was funny successful talking to Cluely due to the fact that successful the summertime of 2025, Cluely was the “cheat-on-everything” improvement — 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 helium had been suspended by Columbia University aft helium and his co-founder developed a instrumentality to cheat connected occupation interviews for bundle engineers.

The co-founders raised $5.3 cardinal successful effect backing from Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures for Cluely, intending to commercialize the instrumentality that got 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 similar Cluely would go truthful palmy that it would spawn a counter-industry of detection tools designed to drawback radical utilizing it.

In June, Cluely raised a $15 cardinal Series A from Andreessen Horowitz. By then, the institution had mastered the creation of creating provocative contented designed to spell viral utilizing stunts and outrageous claims to support Cluely successful the headlines and pull caller users. The strategy was the speech of the town. Lee adjacent discussed however palmy rage-bait selling tactics were for gaining aboriginal customers astatine TechCrunch’s 2025 Disrupt lawsuit successful October.

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

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