Cleavr raises €8 million seed for invoice collection
Paris fintech Cleavr raised an €8 million seed, led by Varsity, to automate invoice collection. The cash-flow gains it cites are still company figures.
Having watched reminder software promise to fix European late payments for years, the tell is that Cleavr has raised an €8 million seed for invoice collection. Tech.eu, Maddyness and Vestbee all dated the Paris round to October 6, 2026, with Varsity as lead. The cash-flow gains hung on that headline are still the company's own figures.
It is also the dull end of the stack, next to Constructor's agentic checkout with Link by Stripe and Valon's $150 million round at a $2.3 billion valuation. Cleavr sells the work that starts once a business invoice exists.
A led round, not a published cheque
Varsity led, alongside existing backers Kima Ventures and Better Angle and new names Portfolio Ventures, Kerala and Financière Saint James, per the company announcement datelined Paris on October 6, Tech.eu and Vestbee. The money is for product, sales hiring and a wider European push. Fintech Global also named 100IN, Station F, Clover, angels from Datadog and Convelio, plus 20 planned hires. Those points are not in the announcement or the other three reports, so they stay out.
The seed comes six months after a €1 million pre-seed. Tech.eu's March 19, 2026 report listed Kima Ventures, Better Angle and three angels: Raphaël Nahum, then described as chief financial officer of Pennylane, Régis Samuel, chief executive of MyUnisoft, and Olivier Brourhant, chief executive of Mantu. Cleavr then had about 50 clients.
Maddyness reported in February 2024 that Varsity, co-founded by Didier Valet, a former Société Générale deputy chief executive, had closed €80 million toward a €150 million fund and planned tickets of €1 million to €5 million. Whether the fund later hit €150 million could not be verified, and Varsity has not disclosed its cheque inside this €8 million. A led round can still sit inside that old range.
What the invoice collection agent does
Founded in 2025 by Baptiste Nassoy, Arthur Guérin and Antoine Grenard, Cleavr connects to an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and runs invoice collection from the ledger. It finds the contact, chases by email, phone or short message service (SMS), logs a promise to pay and flags a dispute. The company site says the service is ISO 27001 certified and hosted in the European Union, with integrations including Pennylane, SAP, NetSuite, Sage and Stripe.
Maddyness reported sales beyond France in Spain, Germany, Belgium, Italy and the United Kingdom, and about 100 customers. The announcement says more than 100 in seven months, none lost, and several billion euros of invoices a year. That is throughput, not revenue. The founders told Tech.eu the product adapts within days, with no locked-in licence, against an announcement subhead that promises setup in 48 hours.
Who answered, and who did not
Didier Valet, general partner at Varsity, told Vestbee: "In just a few months, they have won over a hundred companies of all sizes, all of which confirm the solution's impact on their cash flow."
Collections is a repetitive, unrewarding task that nobody wants to do. By delegating it to Cleavr, finance teams can focus on higher-value work.
Baptiste Nassoy, co-founder and chief executive, said that to Tech.eu. Mathieu Vegreville, chief operating officer at Greenly, says on Cleavr's site, in a testimonial rather than an outside interview, that reminders now go out in every country and every language. Pennylane has published no note on the seed. Nahum backed the pre-seed, and the site lists Pennylane as a customer since 2025 and as an integration. A check on October 7, 2026 found no comment from Chaser, Kolleno or Upflow, credit-control tools in a September 15, 2026 vendor note by Trove.
No new legal deadline
A 30-day cap would have made the pitch simpler. The European Commission proposed that maximum in September 2023, inside a regulation to replace the late-payment directive. Parliament's first reading was April 23, 2024. Trans.INFO reported on September 24, 2026 that the file was still blocked in the Council, with no application date. BusinessEurope, EuroCommerce and Eurochambres had asked in March 2025 for withdrawal.
Cleavr says customers cut days sales outstanding (DSO) by 37% within the first few weeks, collect 40% more cash and recover 80% of chasing time. Tech.eu attributes the figures to the company. They are not audited, and zero churn at seven months is thin: most contracts have not reached a renewal. Elsewhere, Walapay's $4.6 million seed and binding equity letters above $40 million at Trustly show fintech capital still moving. Cleavr sits between those raises.
The next test is the ledger, not the demo. The seed pays for sellers in markets Cleavr already names, inside SAP, NetSuite, Sage and Pennylane. If those vendors ship their own agents, the no-lock-in line meets the system that already holds the books. Renewal then depends on cash still arriving faster after the first quarter.
Reporting by Rick Steves. Filed 7 October 2026, 15:53 GMT.
Senior Reporter, Regulation and Fintech
Rick Steves has seen business and economics through many lenses. He joined the financial services industry in 2009, and has been a financial journalist since 2011.
