Suspended from Columbia, student raises $5 million for AI cheating tool: ‘The world will say…’
After being suspended from Columbia for his AI cheating tool, Chungin Lee secured $5.3 million for his new startup.
A Columbia University student, who was suspended for creating an AI tool to cheat in coding interviews to secure summer internships at tech giants like Amazon, Meta, TikTok and more, has raised $5.3 million in funding for what he called "changing the definition of cheating."
21-year-old Chungin Lee who goes by Roy Lee built an AI tool named Interview Coder, an invisible application which offered real-time assistance to software engineers in technical interviews that used LeetCode.
After his tool went viral on social media for effectively fooling the biggest tech companies, Lee faced flak from Meta and Amazon and was eventually suspended from Columbia. However, he doubled down and created Cluely, an AI tool that helps users ‘cheat on everything' including interviews, exams, and sales calls through hidden in-browser windows.
Hitting back at those who labelled the startup as a means of cheating at interviews, the company shared the news of securing their new multi-million funding with a message.
"They called calculators cheating. They called Google cheating. The world will say the same about AI. We're not stopping. Cluely just raised a $5.3M pre-seed to build the future — faster," it read.
'Everyone told me to quit'
Lee said four weeks after he launched Interview Coder, he was kicked out of Columbia and blacklisted by Amazon and was told by those around him to quit his plan to expand his AI tool.
"Everyone in my life told me to quit, but I ignored all advice and kept going. I've since come to learn that you really need to swing big if you ever wanna make it. Hope this resonates with some of you. This mentality is what inspired me to build Cluely, the ultimate end-state of Interview Coder, and something I never would've thought I could build six months ago. This is the most ambitious project I will ever work on," he declared on X.
(Also read: Columbia student creates AI tool to easily land offers from Amazon, Meta, TikTok and more)
