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On Sunday, 21-year-old Chungin \u201cRoy\u201d Lee announced<\/a> he\u2019s raised $5.3 million in seed funding from Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures for his startup, Cluely, that offers an AI tool to \u201ccheat on everything.\u201d<\/p>\n The startup was born after Lee posted<\/a> in a viral X thread that he was suspended by Columbia University after he and his co-founder developed a tool to cheat on job interviews for software engineers.<\/p>\n That tool, originally called Interview Coder, is now part of their San Francisco-based startup Cluely<\/a>. It offers its users the chance to \u201ccheat\u201d on things like exams, sales calls, and job interviews thanks to a hidden in-browser window that can\u2019t be viewed by the interviewer or test giver.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cluely has published a manifesto<\/a> comparing itself to inventions like the calculator and spellcheck, which were originally derided as \u201ccheating.\u201d<\/p>\n Cluely also published a slickly produced, but polarizing, launch video of Lee using a hidden AI assistant to (unsuccessfully) lie to a woman about his age, and even his knowledge of art, on a date at a fancy restaurant:<\/p>\n While some praised<\/a> the video for grabbing people\u2019s attention, others derided it as reminiscent of dystopian sci-fi television show \u201cBlack Mirror\u201d:<\/p>\n Lee, who is Cluely\u2019s CEO, told TechCrunch the AI cheating tool surpassed $3 million in ARR earlier this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cluely\u2019s other co-founder is another 21-year-old former Columbia student, Neel Shanmugan, who is Cluely\u2019s COO. Shanmugan was also embroiled in disciplinary proceedings at Columbia over the AI tool. Both co-founders have dropped out of Columbia, the university\u2019s student newspaper reported<\/a> last week. Columbia declined to comment, citing student privacy laws.<\/p>\n Cluely began as a tool for developers to cheat on knowledge of LeetCode, a platform for coding questions that some in software engineering circles \u2013 including Cluely\u2019s founders, of course \u2013 consider outdated and a waste of time.<\/p>\n Lee says he was able to snag an internship with Amazon using the AI cheating tool. Amazon declined to comment on Lee\u2019s particular case to TechCrunch, but said its job candidates must acknowledge they won\u2019t use unauthorized tools during the interview process.<\/p>\n Cluely isn\u2019t the only controversial AI startup launched this month. Earlier, a famed AI researcher announced his own startup with the stated mission of replacing all human workers everywhere<\/a>, causing a brouhaha of its own on X.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n