CLEVERLY, LDA

Their core work

Cleverly is a Portuguese technology SME that builds cloud-based conversational AI systems for customer support, with a core focus on language-agnostic chatbots powered by NLP and machine learning. Their flagship work — the COALA platform — is an AI-driven customer support assistant designed to operate across multiple languages without requiring language-specific retraining. They develop the full stack: NLP pipelines, dialogue management, and cloud deployment, targeting businesses that need to automate customer service at scale. Their two H2020 projects are essentially two phases of commercializing the same core product, suggesting a product company rather than a research lab.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Cleverly's H2020 track is short and tightly focused — both projects ran between 2019 and 2022 on essentially the same product, so there is no meaningful thematic shift over time. The first project (COALA) carried no indexed keywords, while the second (CCOALA) made their technical stack explicit: AI, ML, NLP, conversational interfaces, and customer service. This likely reflects growing confidence in their positioning rather than a change in direction. The pattern suggests a company that entered H2020 funding with a clear product vision and used EU grants to scale and validate it commercially, rather than to explore new research directions.

Cleverly is on a product commercialization trajectory — having secured SME Instrument Phase 2 funding (the most competitive EU grant for innovative SMEs), they are likely focused on scaling their multilingual conversational AI platform into European markets rather than pursuing further exploratory R&D.

How they like to work

Cleverly has acted exclusively as project coordinator across all their H2020 activity, and their recorded consortium partner count is zero — meaning they ran both projects as standalone entities or with subcontractors not captured in CORDIS. This is characteristic of product-focused SMEs using EU grants to fund internal R&D and market validation rather than to build research networks. A potential partner should expect to work with a commercially-driven team that moves fast and prioritizes deployment over academic output.

Cleverly has no recorded consortium partners in the CORDIS data, which is unusual even for SME Instrument projects. Their collaborative footprint within the EU research network is minimal, and all their H2020 activity has been self-contained within Portugal.

What sets them apart

Cleverly stands out as one of the few Portuguese SMEs to secure SME Instrument Phase 2 funding — a grant awarded to fewer than 5% of applicants — specifically for a multilingual conversational AI product, which signals validated commercial potential and technical credibility. Their language-agnostic architecture is a meaningful differentiator in the EU market, where businesses routinely operate across 5–10 languages and existing chatbot solutions require per-language customization. For a consortium needing an AI-driven customer-facing component with proven EU-grant pedigree, Cleverly offers ready-made technology rather than research-stage prototypes.

Highlights from their portfolio

• COALA
  Secured €1.52M under SME Instrument Phase 2 — one of the most competitive EU funding instruments — validating both the technical approach and commercial viability of their language-agnostic conversational AI platform.
• CCOALA
  A follow-on CSA project running in parallel with COALA, suggesting Cleverly used EU funding strategically to pursue both product development and coordination/dissemination simultaneously.