Cleo, a leading family benefits platform supporting working families in the planning stage through the teenage years, today announced a $40 million Series C investment led by Transformation Capital, with participation from Glynn Capital, PruVen Capital and Gaingels and existing investors Greylock, NEA and Felicis. In conjunction with this round, Transformation Capital Managing Partner, Mike Dixon will join Cleo’s Board. This round brings Cleo’s total funding to $83 million.
Since its founding in 2016, Cleo has become the industry’s most complete and high-impact family benefits platform. Its products and services help a diverse set of more than 100 leading employers attract, retain, and drive better health outcomes for working parents in over 55 countries. In the last year, the company saw 8x membership growth and over 100% increase in revenue from employers across several verticals, including Fortune 50 technology companies, food and beverage companies like Schwan’s Company and companies with large, distributed workforces like Learning Care Group. Cleo also saw exceptional growth within current customers like Salesforce which expanded their use of Cleo to include the Cleo Kids product, supporting working parents with children up to age 12. Following the recent addition of new executives in finance, sales and human resources, Cleo will continue to grow its team to support increasing demand, particularly focused on product and engineering.
“The new era of dependent care is here,” says Sarahjane Sacchetti, CEO of Cleo. “What we’ve seen in the last twelve months is a massive acceleration in a trend of companies of all sizes looking for ways to better support their employees in a holistic manner. A recent report shows that 36 percent of working parents with children under 10 are considering leaving the workforce and another 30 percent are considering downshifting their careers. Employers see these alarming numbers and understand that when they proactively address their employees’ needs for support around mental health, pregnancy, and early childhood, they’re able to reduce healthcare spend while also improving retention rates, ultimately saving millions of dollars for large employers.”
Cleo pairs member families with an individual coach that proactively guides them through every up and down of family planning, expecting a child, and raising a family—all while enabling working parents to thrive in their workplace. Through Cleo’s comprehensive app, they are able to access personalized content, a supportive parent community, and a global network of certified experts including therapists, doulas, lactation consultants, among others.
“Cleo is at the forefront of a new and burgeoning category of healthcare focused on families and has been successful in meeting the moment in which employers are seeking ways to support working parents,” says Mike Dixon, Managing Partner at Transformation Capital. “Cleo’s meaningful services and support, proven outcomes, and role as the leading employer-sponsored family health benefit position the company to fundamentally reshape the benefits landscape and improve the lives of generations of parents and children.”
In 2020, Cleo expanded the offering of its Kids product from support for parents of children up to age 5 to cover parents with children up to age 12. In 2022, Cleo will extend its coverage to include support for parents with children up to age 18 for specific programs such as neurodiversity support. Launched in Q3 2020, Cleo Marketplace is an ecosystem of vetted partners that provide products and services to support working families, such as childcare and educational enrichment programs, fertility, surrogacy, adoption services and nutrition. Cleo Marketplace now includes 17 partners— including the likes of Winnie, Learning Care Group, Wonderschool, and Happiest Baby—and will soon be available to all Cleo customers. Over the next year, Cleo plans to continually add new partners to expand its care offering.
Cleo is also extending their clinical interventions, ensuring Cleo members receive personalized support around key health and wellness challenges, including fertility optimization, reduction of cesarean births, mental health screening and support, pediatric neurodiversity, and more. These programs enable Cleo to enhance their ability to identify risk factors, intervene early, and provide the ongoing support necessary for more positive outcomes.
Cleo’s growth comes at a critical time when employers are seeing the grave support deficiencies for working parents, and working mothers in particular. Company performance can improve nearly 50 percent when women are represented at the top. Yet in 2020 over two million women left the workforce with one in three citing lack of childcare. Stand-out organizations like PepsiCo are choosing Cleo as their partner to support and retain top talent and create a diverse, inclusive, and thriving workplace for working parents. When organizations invest in their working parents, they win.
