Cluely says its ARR hit $7M after signing a public company; a startup called Pickle says it built Glass, an open source, free product similar to Cluely
so much money sloshing around, if someone just snuck me a million I'd pay off all the loans of my family and just check out from work forever — and here multiple millions getting burned on fucking nothing Andrew Jennings / @andrewkjennings.com : Curtains for Zoosha? K‑smog and Batboy caught flipping a grunt. [embedded post] Jess / @mirrorman : “Dinkle, formerly owned by Fleem, has been picked up A1 startup investment brokers Klug brothers, in order to fill out new system of components they are calling ‘Smoop’, to eventually be rolled into the new IPO Linkloof, as reported by PoodlePump. @saidaitmbarek : everyone wants to win big and fast — from magic growth hacks, to AI cloning apps, miracle workflows, cluely, soham.. — a new market has emerged: AI-powered deception engines. — what used to be better products are now just better lies. @neutral.zone : Oh this is too funny. Someone's saying it looks like Cluely might have lifted gpl3 code and relicensed it as Apache (which is a no-no). X: Soham / @soham_btw : you didnt build shit in 4 days you yoinked a gpl-v3 code, slapped an apache license on it, and called it a startup here's a quick 101 on how not to steal open source @garrytan @ycombinator is this what you invest in? yuck Daniel / @leinadpark : Good morning, @im_roy_lee! In just 4 days we open-sourced the latest @cluely called Glass. Same real-time meeting assistant, sharper output & design, but 100% free. Distribution isn't the moat; velocity is. 🔗 https://github.com/... (Highlights ↓ ) [video] @xor_a_b : A copy of a copy of a copy machine. [image] @can : you gotta admit it's kinda poetic that someone cheated to create a copy of the cheating app @vu1k4n_ : Cheating on the cheaters lmao Gabor Hollbeck / @gaborhollbeck : This Liquid Glass effect was done with Adobe After Effects, took me 15 min to recreate you can see it when the distortions change when they zoom in on the buttons, this would not happen if its a screen recording rest is cool [video] Akshay Deshraj / @akshaydeshraj : “we don't waste money on fancy vids; we just code” 🤣 Ronin / @seatedro : please stop doing things [image] Mauricio Rubio / @_mauriciorubio : Open source is having its moment like never before and I'm loving it. The new moat is not the product. It's execution, distribution, speed and most importantly, pure, raw, human creativity. The most creative will win the new race, not the most technical. Abdullah Mukadam / @abd_mukadam : For those who don't know, this project is an exact copy of the @cheating_daddy . Soham (creator of cheating daddy) has posted it. Max R. / @maxr_v : Competitive capitalism @randomsh179 : moat is video editing Mike Gao / @gaozenghao : I knew something was wrong when I saw the .vscode folder checked into the git directory..... @ai_dumy : Found API keys in your Repo .. Introducing ‘api-hunter’ 🕵️ it checks your staged files (git add .) or a local file and looks for API Keys and Secrets . It has a set of default pattens to look for you can also add your own patterns to it Install using pip install api-hunter 🧵 [video] Tara Debek / @taradebek : VCs want you to believe that distribution is the moat. It's not - speed IS @spedru : yc startup violating the gpl is actually nuts dude lmfao @sheepyweb3 : There's something so satisfying about seeing @cluely products cloned and open-sourced over and over. Bless @circlure2 : you changed the readme and license, and then wiped the commit history to cover it up after being outed for stealing the entire codebase. you're PATHETIC. [image] Aryan Sawhney / @aryansawhney17 : Code looking real similar 😭 @soham_btw @leinadpark respect the open source though!!!! [image] @cremieuxrecueil : Fully agreed. I am very disappointed to see people supporting cheating startups and deception in the world of work. Silicon Valley should not promote pathological cheaters, people who engage in corporate espionage, or ‘just doing things’ that are actively bad. Nik / @ns123abc : > A YC startup claimed built a cheating tool in 4 days but they actually stole it from an open-source project called Cheating Daddy which is literally a clone of Cluely the $15 million a16z backed startup building... a cheating tool [image]
Context & Ripple Effects
Cluely moved quickly from a seed round tied to its interview-cheating tool to a broader desktop assistant positioned for meetings, sales and learning workflows. Its backers had explicitly framed speed in marketing and product iteration as an advantage in AI competition (a16z’s case for speed over product polish).
The reported $7M ARR milestone gives that go-to-market approach a concrete enterprise-sales marker, while Pickle’s free, open-source Glass highlights how readily the underlying meeting-assistant experience can be reproduced. Claims around copied code and license handling remain allegations, not established findings.
First-order effects
- Cluely can point to a public-company contract and its reported $7M ARR as evidence that at least one enterprise buyer is willing to pay for its product.
- Glass gives prospective users a free open-source alternative; meanwhile, the licensing allegations put Cluely’s code provenance under heightened reputational and compliance scrutiny if they are substantiated.
Second-order effects
- Cluely will face more pressure to differentiate through reliability, distribution, enterprise support and customer trust rather than the basic real-time assistant feature set, which Glass also targets.
- Enterprise buyers evaluating these tools may increase legal and security review of open-source dependencies and vendor licensing, particularly where product lineage is disputed.
Third-order effects
- If free clones continue to proliferate, real-time AI assistants may become a commodity layer, shifting durable advantage toward distribution, integrations and trusted enterprise procurement relationships.
- The episode also illustrates a governance constraint on rapid AI shipping: permissive product positioning does not remove the need for clear software-license compliance and auditable code origins.
The trend: AI application startups are racing to turn fast-built assistants into enterprise revenue before open-source alternatives commoditize their core features.