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Cledara is a London-based financial technology company that provides a software-as-a-service management platform to help businesses discover, purchase, track, and cancel their cloud subscriptions. Maintaining additional corporate offices in New York and Barcelona, the platform currently serves more than 1,000 corporate customers operating across 32 countries. The centralized system allows finance and IT teams to manage their corporate spending across a dataset of over 5,600 different software vendors. Functioning with an estimated workforce of 63 to 84 employees, the company generates revenue through platform subscription fees while offering virtual cards, compliance tracking, and artificial intelligence-powered procurement tools. The enterprise has received backing and advisory support from several notable financial and technology institutions, including Techstars, Mastercard, Visa, Anthemis, and Morgan Stanley. Cledara was officially founded in 2018 by Cristina Vila and Brad van Leeuwen.
Cledara has raised $23.9M across 3 funding rounds.
Cledara has raised $23.9M in total across 3 funding rounds.
Cledara has raised $23.9M across 3 funding rounds. Most recently, it raised $20.0M Series A in September 2022.
| Date | Round | Lead Investors | Other Investors | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 1, 2022 | $20M Series A | Paul Morgenthaler | Nauta Capital, Swanlaab Venture Factory, Pankaj Tibrewal, Massive, Notion Capital | Announced |
| Dec 1, 2020 | $3M Seed | Nauta Capital | Outrun Ventures, Rokk3r Labs, Swanlaab Venture Factory, Zeroth, Farhan Lalji | Announced |
| Sep 1, 2019 | $930K Seed | — | Rokk3r Labs, Zeroth, Chris Adelsbach, Techstars | Announced |
Cledara has raised $23.9M in total across 3 funding rounds.
Cledara's investors include Paul Morgenthaler, Nauta Capital, Swanlaab Venture Factory, Pankaj Tibrewal, Massive, Notion Capital, Outrun Ventures, Rokk3r Labs, Zeroth, Farhan Lalji, Chris Adelsbach, Techstars.
Cledara is a SaaS management platform that centralizes control over software subscriptions, payments, and risks for finance and IT teams in growing businesses, particularly SMEs. It solves the problem of fragmented SaaS spending by providing visibility into usage, automating procurement, renewals, invoicing, and compliance, while enabling cost optimization through features like spend alerts, virtual cards, and underutilized tool detection—helping companies save money and reduce admin workload without expanding finance teams.[1][2][4][6] Serving fast-scaling firms across Europe and the US, Cledara has demonstrated strong growth momentum since 2018, expanding to offices in New York and Barcelona, supporting 500+ customers in 30 European countries, and tripling US transaction volume in its first month via embedded fintech capabilities.[2][5][8]
Cledara was founded in 2018 in London by Cristina Vila Vives, a Forbes-recognized leader whose team blends financial services expertise with deep technology and startup experience from institutions like the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Caixa Bank, PayPal, Railsbank, and dopay.[5][7][8] The idea emerged from Vila's insight into the chaos of software procurement in scaling companies: combining a management platform with embedded payments to track how software enters, gets used, priced, and interacts with other tools—addressing the "paradox of choice" in B2B SaaS.[5] Early traction came via the Techstars accelerator and backing from investors behind Sendgrid, Marqeta, Salesloft, Monese, and Digital Ocean, plus advisors from Mastercard, Visa, Anthemis, and Morgan Stanley; this fueled rapid expansion into the US market after three years serving complex European needs.[2][5][7]
Cledara stands out in the crowded SaaS management space through its fintech-native approach and contextual intelligence:
Competitors like Zluri, Vendr, and Zylo focus more on IT/security or procurement, but Cledara's payments integration delivers deeper, actionable data across the full lifecycle.[1]
Cledara rides the explosive growth of SaaS sprawl and AI-driven spend, where companies face "paradox of choice" amid rising costs, shadow IT, and compliance risks in a market saturated with B2B tools—the US alone being the world's largest.[5][6] Timing is ideal post-2020s remote work boom and economic pressures, as firms double headcount yet demand lean ops; Cledara's entry into this $100B+ software spend arena leverages European learnings for US scale.[2][5] It influences the ecosystem by aggregating anonymized usage data to guide better decisions, fostering efficient software ecosystems, and enabling fintech innovations like sub-card ledgers that power tripled transaction growth—positioning it as a key enabler for SME agility in cloud/AI eras.[5][8]
Cledara is primed for hypergrowth by deepening US penetration, enhancing AI risk controls, and expanding its payments-led intelligence to cloud/ad spend, capitalizing on trends like rising SaaS consolidation and regulatory scrutiny. As SaaS budgets balloon with AI adoption, its unique data moat and investor backing will likely drive acquisitions or IPO paths, evolving it from SME specialist to enterprise standard—reinforcing its role as the go-to for taming software chaos in scaling tech firms.[2][5][6][7]
