The pitch deck practically writes itself: What if software could do all the uncomfortable parts of collecting money—the follow-up emails, the awkward phone calls, the gentle-then-firm escalations—without any human involvement?
That's the premise behind Cleavr, a Paris-area startup that emerged from stealth in late 2025 with a bold claim: it's built an "AI coworker" capable of managing the entire accounts receivable cycle. The company closed a pre-seed funding round quietly, with no formal announcement or disclosed investor list. Corporate records filed in France show only modest capital adjustments—the telltale sign of a convertible note round, the kind early-stage European startups often use to avoid immediately setting a valuation.
Founded in mid-July 2025 by three French entrepreneurs in their mid-to-late twenties, Cleavr is betting that businesses are ready to hand off one of finance's least glamorous tasks to an algorithm. And in a market where cash flow problems routinely sink otherwise healthy companies, maybe that's not such a hard sell.
Automating the Art of the Dunning Call
Cleavr's software does what most finance departments actively avoid: it chases overdue invoices, relentlessly. The platform initiates contact with debtors through email, SMS, and voice—yes, actual phone calls—identifying decision-makers and negotiating payment terms. When those efforts fail, it routes cases to a pan-European network of bailiffs and collection attorneys.
The company says deployment takes three days, a claim that feels almost suspiciously fast but aligns with its integrations across more than 100 accounting and ERP platforms. SAP, NetSuite, Odoo, Stripe—all the usual suspects are covered. In December 2025, Cleavr struck a partnership with Pennylane, a French accounting software provider, introducing a three-click integration that automatically syncs overdue invoices and reconciles payments.
Cleavr doesn't charge upfront fees. Instead, it takes a cut of whatever it collects, with pricing scaled to the age of the debt. Fresh receivables—those under 45 days overdue—cost 10.8 percent. Let them age past 18 months, though, and Cleavr's commission climbs to 29.5 percent. It's a model that aligns incentives but also raises questions about whether the platform prioritizes easier wins over more challenging collections.
The company's own marketing materials, dated December 2025, claim €1.3 million in recovered debts and a 47 percent recovery rate. Those numbers are self-reported and impossible to verify independently. Customer logos displayed on Cleavr's website include Greenly, a carbon accounting startup; BDO, the multinational consulting firm; Ramsay Santé, a private hospital operator; and Skello, a workforce management platform. Whether those are paying customers or pilot participants isn't clear.
Three Founders, Minimal Public Profile
Cleavr's founding team consists of Baptiste Vincent Nassoy and Antoine Alain Grenard, both born in 1999 and serving as president and managing director, respectively. A third co-founder, Arthur Yves Gustave Hubert Guerin, joined in September 2025 as a second managing director, with his appointment formalized in early December. At 33, he's the elder statesman of the group by nearly a decade.
The company is registered in Annet-sur-Marne, a quiet suburb east of Paris, with software development listed as its primary activity. Filings from March 2026 note at least one employee on the books. The registered share capital sits at €1,188.30—a curiously specific figure that reflects a series of small capital increases in November 2025 but no major equity infusion. That supports the theory that the pre-seed round was structured as convertible instruments, which delay the conversion into equity until a later, larger round.
None of the founders maintain active LinkedIn profiles with detailed work histories, and the company has no public hiring page. For a startup positioning itself as the future of finance automation, Cleavr remains remarkably opaque about its own operations.
The Competition Is Already Here
Cleavr isn't exactly early. France's Sidetrade, a publicly traded company on Euronext Growth, has been refining AI-driven order-to-cash software for years and recently announced plans for a commercial AI Cash Collection Agent. Across the Atlantic, HighRadius—a well-funded U.S. player—rolled out what it calls "autonomous finance" features in 2025, leaning heavily into agentic AI.
Still, the market for accounts receivable automation is large and fragmented enough that multiple approaches can coexist. Perhaps more importantly, the shift from rules-based workflows to agentic AI represents a meaningful technological leap. Instead of following predetermined scripts, these systems can theoretically adapt in real time, tailoring their approach based on debtor behavior and communication patterns.
France's broader AI ecosystem is also heating up. Bpifrance, the state-backed investment bank, committed €10 billion to AI development through 2029—a signal that early-stage ventures in this space have institutional backing, at least in principle.
What They're Building Next
Since closing the round, Cleavr has been shipping features at a steady clip. Blog posts from late 2025 and early 2026 detail additions like automated payment schedules and a streamlined offering for smaller businesses. The company also maintains API documentation for Cleavr Connect, an embeddable product designed for platforms that want to white-label the collection functionality for their own customers.
But critical details remain elusive. Revenue? Unknown. Customer count? Not disclosed. Go-to-market strategy beyond the Pennylane partnership? Unclear. For a company that brands itself as an AI coworker, the next challenge will be proving it can scale beyond the early adopters—and that businesses are willing to trust their customer relationships to an algorithm making dunning calls on their behalf.
That's a harder sell than the pitch deck makes it sound.
