British AI-based personal finance chatbot Cleo is set to start offering its own financial products after raising $10 million in a Series A funding round led by Balderton Capital.
Balderton joins the likes of Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom, TransferWise founder Taavet Hinrikus and LoveFilm co-founder Simon Franks as Cleo investors.
Launched in 2016, London-based Cleo integrates with users' bank accounts and then uses AI to analyse spending habits and transaction histories to help with money management.
Created by a team staffed by machine learning experts who have worked at Google, Wonga and Amazon, the bot provides insights across all UK bank and credit card accounts through Facebook Messenger.
In April it launched in the US, where it signed up 350,000 users within four months, and now plans to expand to other markets.
In addition, the startup wants to introduce its own range of financial products. Although details are thin, CEO Barney Hussey-Yeo points out that "from overdraft fees to credit cards, the traditional range of financial products doesn’t work for this generation. The model of retail banking is not set up for the people it serves. Cleo’s changing that."