Cleavr Raises €8M Seed to Automate Late Invoice Collection Across Europe

Paris-based fintech startup Cleavr has raised €8 million in seed funding to automate the collection of overdue invoices for businesses across Europe.

The round was led by Varsity, with participation from Portfolio Ventures, Kerala Ventures and Financière Saint James. Existing backers Kima Ventures and Better Angle, which both participated in Cleavr's earlier pre-seed round, also continued their support.

The new funding comes just six months after Cleavr raised €1 million in pre-seed financing, bringing its total funding to €9 million.

Founded in 2025 by Baptiste Nassoy, Arthur Guérin and Antoine Grenard, Cleavr provides an AI-powered platform that automates accounts receivable and invoice collection. The company says its customers have reduced payment collection time by 37%, collected 40% more cash and saved 80% of the time previously spent on collections.

Cleavr now serves more than 100 customers across France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Italy and the UK.

The problem behind late invoice payments

For finance teams, sending an invoice is only the beginning of the payment process.

When customers fail to pay on time, finance employees often have to identify the right person to contact, send reminders, make phone calls, follow up on payment promises and resolve disputes.

That process can consume significant amounts of time, particularly for companies with large numbers of customers and invoices.

Cleavr is designed to automate much of that work.

After an invoice is issued, the platform identifies the appropriate contacts at the customer company and manages follow-up through email, phone and SMS.

It can track promises to pay and manage disputes that emerge during the collection process.

The company says human employees are only brought into the process when necessary.

If an initial contact does not respond, Cleavr's AI can search for alternative contacts within the same organization. During calls, the AI identifies itself as an AI agent.

The company's pitch is therefore broader than automated reminder emails. It is attempting to automate the workflow surrounding unpaid invoices from the first follow-up through to payment or escalation.

From €1M pre-seed to €8M seed

Cleavr was founded in 2025 by Baptiste Nassoy, Arthur Guérin and Antoine Grenard.

Nassoy, who serves as co-founder and CEO, previously worked as an analyst at Kima Ventures.

Guérin previously worked at Voodoo, while Grenard worked at PwC before joining Cleavr.

The company raised its first €1 million in pre-seed funding six months before the latest round.

Kima Ventures and Better Angle led that earlier round, with participation from Another VC, Aonia Ventures, Super Capital and angel investors connected to companies including Pennylane, MyUnisoft and Convelio.

The latest seed round takes Cleavr's total funding to €9 million.

The rapid timing between the two rounds reflects the company's reported customer growth. Cleavr says its customer base has grown to more than 100 companies, almost doubling since March.

The company has also expanded from France into five additional European markets in less than seven months.

Cleavr's AI-powered collection workflow

Cleavr's platform works across several stages of the accounts receivable process.

Once an invoice becomes overdue, the system determines who should be contacted and chooses an appropriate communication channel.

It can send reminders through email and SMS and make phone calls using an AI agent.

The platform also tracks payment promises, meaning finance teams can see which customers have committed to paying and follow up when those commitments are not met.

Disputes can be managed within the same workflow.

The system can also look for other contacts within a company when an initial contact is unresponsive.

This is important because invoice collection often depends on finding the right person rather than simply sending more reminders.

Cleavr says it can automate as much as 80% of collection activity, compared with around 20% for older tools that primarily automate scheduled reminders.

The company's reported customer results provide another measure of its performance.

Cleavr says customers have reduced days sales outstanding by 37%, collected 40% more cash and saved 80% of the time previously spent on collections.

The company also says it has not lost any customers so far.

More than 100 customers across six European markets

Cleavr currently serves more than 100 customers across France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Italy and the UK.

Its customers include Skello, Swile and Greenly.

The company says it handles several billion euros worth of invoices each year.

It also claims that new customers can be onboarded within 48 hours and that customers achieve a return on investment within 96 hours.

Those figures are company-reported metrics, but they point to the central argument behind Cleavr's business model: invoice collection is a recurring operational problem that can potentially be automated without requiring companies to replace their existing finance systems.

The company says its technology adapts to each organization's ERP and internal processes.

That approach is particularly relevant for European businesses, where companies use a wide range of accounting and enterprise software systems.

Investors see an opportunity in autonomous finance

Varsity led Cleavr's €8 million seed round.

Didier Valet, general partner at Varsity, said the firm was impressed by Cleavr's execution and the impact reported by its growing customer base.

He also pointed to the size of the collections market and the relatively limited level of automation currently available.

Kima Ventures, the venture capital arm associated with Xavier Niel, and Better Angle also continued backing the company after participating in the pre-seed round.

The new round also brought in Portfolio Ventures, Kerala Ventures and Financière Saint James.

The investors are backing a broader shift toward AI agents handling operational finance tasks rather than simply providing employees with another software interface.

Cleavr's founders describe this as a move away from traditional SaaS, where companies adapt their workflows to fixed software products.

The company instead aims to customize its AI-driven collection workflow around each customer's ERP, processes and communication preferences.

The European late-payment problem

Late payments remain a significant issue for European businesses, particularly smaller companies that have less cash available to absorb long payment cycles.

Cleavr says late payments contribute to almost a quarter of business failures in France and tie up billions of euros in cash.

The French Payment Delays Observatory estimated that small and medium-sized companies lost €15 billion in 2024 as a result of payment delays.

The situation has improved somewhat in 2026.

According to Altares, the average payment delay in France fell to 12.3 days during the first six months of 2026, below the European average of 13.1 days.

However, only 49.7% of French companies were paying suppliers on time, according to the same data cited by the source.

That leaves a large potential market for tools that can help businesses collect outstanding payments more efficiently.

Competition is increasing

Cleavr is entering a market where several fintech and AI companies are already working on accounts receivable and collections.

French fintech Upflow raised a $15 million Series A in 2021 to develop accounts receivable management software.

Swedish company Paraglide raised €4.2 million in January 2026 for receivables agents.

Frankfurt-based Donnerstag.ai raised €4.3 million in November 2025, while New York-based Lunos AI raised $5 million in September 2025.

Cleavr's differentiation is its emphasis on agentic automation across the entire collection process rather than simply automating reminders.

But that strategy also creates a longer-term competitive question.

Cleavr connects with accounting platforms such as Pennylane. If those platforms eventually build invoice collection directly into their own products, Cleavr could face pressure from the software systems its customers already use.

The company will therefore need to demonstrate that its specialized AI workflow produces enough value to justify using a dedicated collection platform.

What comes next for Cleavr?

Cleavr plans to use the €8 million seed funding to expand its sales team and continue developing its product.

The broader goal is to accelerate growth across Europe.

Its early expansion has been rapid. The company has gone from a €1 million pre-seed round to a €8 million seed round in six months and expanded from France into six European markets.

The next challenge will be maintaining that pace while proving that customer results remain strong as the platform handles more invoices and larger businesses.

The company's ability to automate collection across different ERPs and internal processes could become an important part of its positioning.

If Cleavr can continue reducing payment delays while requiring limited human intervention, it could turn accounts receivable collection from a manual finance task into an increasingly autonomous workflow.

For now, the €9 million raised since its 2025 founding gives Cleavr the capital to expand its AI-powered collections platform across one of Europe's most persistent business problems.