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Startup profile: Cleatus
Founded by: Yigit Guney, Erik Sherman and Mithat Cakmak
Year founded: 2023
Headquarters: Arlington, VA
Sector: Software development, agentic AI, government contracting
Funding and valuation: $4 million seed, valuation undisclosed
Key ecosystem partners: Motley Fool Ventures
When Yigit Guney started his own construction company after graduating from college, he struggled to keep track of the government contract opportunities that could help him really scale.
Working on the job site at Northern Virginia Community College took up a majority of his time, leaving little room to pursue larger, federal work. So he created a platform to help other small businesses take advantage of the country’s biggest customers: Cleatus. Headquartered in Arlington, it’s an agentic AI platform that automates finding, applying for and winning contracts.
“If I had an AI that could do those things for me while I was on site,” Guney told Technical.ly, “that would have been very nice.”
“If I had an AI that could do those things for me … that would have been very nice.”
Yigit Guney, Cleatus
He stepped away from construction to spend his full time as CEO of the startup, which has an office in Clarendon. When founded in 2023, it specialized in automating contract discovery through a database of federal, state and local opportunities. It’s since expanded with the ability to analyze competitors’ award histories, help write proposals and other tasks.
Investors are interested. Cleatus in May raised a $4 million seed round co-led by AI-focused Las Olas Venture Capital and REVO Capital, with participation from Motley Fool Ventures in nearby Alexandria.
Why build in Northern Virginia? To be in the middle of a government contracting hub. “We’re one of the most DC-based startups you could be,” Guney said.
Cleatus automates preparing proposals, tracking submissions and finding work for government contractors. (Courtesy)
All in on agentic AI
To get insights about relevant government contracts, companies upload their data to Cleatus, including documents outlining strategy and previous jobs they’ve won. The info is used to score how well an opportunity fits their work, for example, and offer pros and cons on applying.
The platform creates context by pulling historical contract data from government archives, Guney said, along with postings across public websites.
AI agents are used to generate analyses and custom reports, and customers interface directly with them through chatbots. Companies can also create their own tailored tools, like a construction firm that built one to autonomously compare RFPs.
To make Cleatus a complete “operating system,” Guney said, customers can link their Google Drive, Microsoft Office, Slack or separate AI bots like ChatGPT and Claude. He believes that feature sets it apart from other AI-powered government contract tools.
“We see that as a huge value add that allows the platform to really, consistently integrate with more customers,” he said. Subscriptions to Cleatus range between $39 to $234 per user per month depending on how much the customer wants to automate.
Cleatus matches government contractors to opportunities based on company and public data. (Courtesy)
Guney and his team used agentic AI to build the platform, which he credits with cutting costs. Some of the software was built atop other models, like OpenAI Frontier, while more complicated agents were custom-built. It’s also used for internal tasks and marketing.
“We’re telling the client to solve a problem agentically,” Guney said. “If we’re not doing that ourselves, we’re not doing something right.”
Stressing capital efficiency
The startup hit $1 million in revenue in its first year and used that to keep building features, Guney said. The cofounders wanted to prove their business model before going after venture capital.
When they started looking toward achieving the FedRAMP High — the strictest authorization for handling sensitive federal data — he knew it was time to pursue VC.
Cleatus AI agents aren’t trained on customer data, he said, and the platform uses AES-256 encryption, which is sometimes called “military-grade” encryption and is thought to be resistant even to quantum computer-driven cracking.
The new funding will also go toward expanding the sales team, growing the staff from 20, to 30 people by the end of the year, per Guney.
“We’re honestly happy that we were bootstrapped,” Guney said. “Because that created a good deal of capital discipline within our team.”