{"id":86685,"date":"2026-06-26T06:00:36","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T06:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/86685\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T06:00:36","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T06:00:36","slug":"cleatus-secures-4m-seed-to-build-agentic-ai-for-govcon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/86685\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleatus secures $4M seed to build agentic AI for govcon"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was reported with support from our partner\u00a0Arlington Economic Development<\/a>, a launchpad for innovation and a top destination for businesses of all sizes.<\/p>\n

Startup profile: Cleatus<\/p>\n

Founded by: Yigit Guney, Erik Sherman and Mithat Cakmak<\/p>\n

Year founded: 2023<\/p>\n

Headquarters: Arlington, VA<\/p>\n

Sector: Software development, agentic AI, government contracting<\/p>\n

Funding and valuation: $4 million seed, valuation undisclosed<\/p>\n

Key ecosystem partners: Motley Fool Ventures<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2019s biggest customers: Cleatus<\/a>. Headquartered in Arlington, it\u2019s an agentic AI platform that automates finding, applying for and winning contracts.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I had an AI that could do those things for me while I was on site,\u201d Guney told Technical.ly, \u201cthat would have been very nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I had an AI that could do those things for me \u2026 that would have been very nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yigit Guney, Cleatus<\/p>\n

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\u2019s since expanded with the ability to analyze competitors\u2019 award histories, help write proposals and other tasks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Investors are interested. Cleatus in May raised a $4 million seed round<\/a> co-led by AI-focused Las Olas Venture Capital and REVO Capital, with participation from Motley Fool Ventures in nearby Alexandria.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why build in Northern Virginia? To be in the middle of a government contracting hub. \u201cWe\u2019re one of the most DC-based startups you could be,\u201d Guney said.<\/p>\n

\"ACleatus automates preparing proposals, tracking submissions and finding work for government contractors. (Courtesy) <\/p>\n

All in on agentic AI\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

To get insights about relevant government contracts, companies upload their data to Cleatus, including documents outlining strategy and previous jobs they\u2019ve won. The info is used to score how well an opportunity fits their work, for example, and offer pros and cons on applying.<\/p>\n

The platform creates context by pulling historical contract data from government archives, Guney said, along with postings across public websites.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

To make Cleatus a complete \u201coperating system,\u201d 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see that as a huge value add that allows the platform to really, consistently integrate with more customers,\u201d he said. Subscriptions to Cleatus range between $39 to $234 per user per month depending on how much the customer wants to automate.<\/p>\n

\"ScreenshotCleatus matches government contractors to opportunities based on company and public data. (Courtesy) <\/p>\n

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\u2019s also used for internal tasks and marketing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re telling the client to solve a problem agentically,\u201d Guney said. \u201cIf we\u2019re not doing that ourselves, we\u2019re not doing something right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stressing capital efficiency\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When they started looking toward achieving the FedRAMP High \u2014 the strictest authorization for handling sensitive federal data \u2014 he knew it was time to pursue VC.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cleatus AI agents aren\u2019t trained on customer data, he said, and the platform uses AES-256 encryption, which is sometimes called \u201cmilitary-grade\u201d encryption<\/a> and is thought to be resistant<\/a> even to quantum computer<\/a>-driven cracking.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re honestly happy that we were bootstrapped,\u201d Guney said. \u201cBecause that created a good deal of capital discipline within our team.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was reported with support from our partner\u00a0Arlington Economic Development, a launchpad for innovation and a top…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[179,7493,3946,10582,1162],"class_list":["post-86685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-agentic-ai","tag-agentic-ai","tag-agentic-artificial-intelligence","tag-funding","tag-govtech","tag-startups"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}