Barney Hussey-Yeo, CEO of AI-powered fintech Cleo, has made headlines for his outspoken nature.
The Sheffield-born entrepreneur has spared no words in criticising the UK’s public markets and regulation, while setting out an ambitious vision for Cleo’s future. Last year, he told Sifted the company’s relaunch in the UK was critical to Western democracy and spoke of building a business worth $100bn.
But interviews with five current and former employees, together with internal Slack messages and public employee reviews seen by Sifted, paint a markedly different picture.
Workers describe a company marked by abrupt shifts in strategy, frequent leadership turnover and a management style they say relies on public criticism and intimidation.
One former employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, claimed Hussey-Yeo had “belittled and intimidated” colleagues. Another claimed employees were subject to an “ever-changing” strategy that left employees anxious and confused.
A former executive said: “The company is directionless, siloed and deeply unhappy.”
In a statement shared with Sifted, Hussey-Yeo said he was proud of the quality of the team and the culture at Cleo. “We don't shy away from it being a high-performance culture, with a level of intensity that doesn't suit everyone who joins,” he said.
“We regularly evaluate the performance of teams and individuals and make hard choices when we need to. We believe this is a healthy way to run an organisation,” he added. “When we make those hard choices and do have to reallocate teams or part with individuals, we do so with transparency and compassion, and we offer a generous exit package in all cases.”
‘Constantly changing priorities’
Several current and former employees told Sifted that Cleo’s strategy shifted frequently, with teams regularly abandoning projects to pursue new priorities.
“Product direction is effectively nonexistent, made worse by constant product management turnover,” wrote a reviewer identifying themselves as a current senior software engineer at Cleo in a Glassdoor review in May.
Backed by investors such as Balderton Capital and EQT Ventures, Cleo offers budgeting tools, automated savings products, credit-building services and cash advances through a chatbot interface.
According to multiple sources, tensions stemmed in part from disagreements over what Cleo fundamentally is: an AI-powered financial assistant or a provider of short-term cash advances.
Three former employees told Sifted that, despite the company’s public emphasis on AI, the bulk of its revenues were generated by its cash advance product.
“Cleo is a cash advance company but Barney doesn’t want it to be known for that — he wants it to be an AI company,” said one former employee.
The cash advance business has been a subject of legal and regulatory scrutiny in the US. Critics argue they can reinforce unhealthy financial habits among frequent users.
Last year, Cleo paid $17m to settle the US Federal Trade Commission’s allegations that the company deceived consumers about how much money they could get and how fast that money could be available within the cash advance offering.
Despite agreeing to the settlement, Cleo denied any wrongdoing and Hussey-Yeo told Sifted the fintech made zero product changes in response to the case.
A class action was also filed against the startup in Pennsylvania, with those suing alleging that the fintech misrepresented its cash advance products as interest-free while charging fees they claim pushed effective interest rates as high as 986%.
Cleo has not filed a substantive defence to the allegations, instead seeking to push the claims into private arbitration. In May, a federal judge ruled that two of the plaintiffs must arbitrate, while allowing a third to proceed in court.
“The company was so unethical at that point,” one former senior leader told Sifted. “Our core demographic there was low-income Americans, despite whatever marketing was done to tell otherwise.”
AI management
Former employees pointed to Hussey-Yeo’s use of AI for performance management as an example of his increasingly experimental approach to running the company.
Two former senior leaders claimed there were instances in which large language models (LLMs) were used to assess strategic documents prepared by executives.
Speaking at a Stripe event in London earlier this month, Hussey-Yeo described how Cleo uses AI systems trained on internal company information to evaluate employee output by scouring Slack messages, Notion documents and engineering activity.
“My engineering managers hate me,” Hussey-Yeo told the audience.
“Where before I had this weird view filtered through all these leaders that had all their different biases and all these different incentive structures. I can actually get really rational clear thoughts from these LLMs and build out the context.”
Not all employees welcomed the approach.
A second Glassdoor reviewer, identifying as a senior software engineer, wrote: “Engineering culture has become increasingly toxic through the use of internally created performance dashboards that attempt to measure developer value through simplistic metrics such as lines of code written.
“This has encouraged unhealthy competition between engineers, incentivised quantity over quality, and demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of how effective software engineering actually works.”
Public criticism
Three Cleo employees told Sifted that Hussey-Yeo would use harsh language when communicating with staff.
One Glassdoor review alleged the CEO spent time “berating people and their efforts openly in Slack channels.”
Sifted has seen multiple internal Slack messages in which Hussey-Yeo used the word “retard”, a term widely considered a slur for people with intellectual disabilities.
In one exchange, after an employee suggested a change to the company’s website, Hussey-Yeo responded “retarded”.
In another chat, Hussey-Yeo opens the thread by saying “what are you retards up to?”, before defending his use of the term after it was challenged by a colleague.
Three sources described an episode involving a former employee whose voice was being considered for use in Cleo's chatbot as the company explored adding voice functionality to its AI products.
According to the sources, Hussey-Yeo asked colleagues in a public Slack channel what they believed the employee's voice was worth after discussions arose about compensation for its use. The post was later deleted, according to the sources.
One former employee who witnessed the exchange said: "If you take a step back, it's discussing someone's pay in public. It got deleted very quickly."
