Prelude Raises €17.2M for User Trust and Onboarding Platform

Paris-based Prelude has successfully closed a €17.2 million Series A funding round, signaling a significant advancement in the critical domain of digital user onboarding and trust verification. The investment, led by prominent venture capital firm 20VC, with substantial backing from Singular, Seedcamp, Deel, and FDJ Ventures, will fuel the company's expansion of its sophisticated trust infrastructure platform. This infusion of capital underscores the growing market demand for robust solutions that combat online fraud while simultaneously enhancing user experience.

The company, founded in 2023 by industry veterans Matias Berny and Quentin Le Bras, who previously honed their expertise at Zenly, is tackling the pervasive inefficiencies and costs associated with traditional user verification methods. Prelude's innovative approach integrates telecom data, behavioral analytics, and machine learning to establish continuous trust profiles for users throughout their digital journey. This moves beyond static, one-time checks to a dynamic assessment of user legitimacy, a crucial evolution in an era of sophisticated bot activity and synthetic identities.

Prelude's platform directly addresses the "hidden costs" of broken onboarding, which include inflated operational expenses due to fraudulent activities, lost revenue from legitimate users abandoning complex verification steps, and the significant damage caused by fraud that bypasses initial security measures. By consolidating previously fragmented tools—such as verification services, fraud detection, identity management, and device intelligence—Prelude offers a unified solution. Early adopters report substantial benefits, including an average reduction of over 40% in verification costs and improved conversion rates, demonstrating the tangible value proposition.

The funding round also saw participation from a notable roster of angel investors, including Steffen Tjerrild (Synthesia), Willem Delbare (Aikido Security), Antoine Le Nel (Revolut), Felix Blossier (Pennylane), George Arison (Grindr), Barney Hussey-Yeo (Cleo), and Will Wu (formerly Match Group), among others. This broad support from seasoned tech leaders highlights confidence in Prelude's vision and execution capabilities.

Co-founder and CEO Matias Berny emphasized the inadequacy of outdated verification methods, stating, “The old playbook is broken. CAPTCHAs don’t stop bots anymore, and a single fraud signal won’t tell you who’s really there. Telling a real user from a fake one is now a business intelligence problem, not a checkbox.” He further elaborated on the strategic importance of the phone number as a foundational element for trust, enhanced by their Intel API.

Concurrent with the funding announcement, Prelude is launching two key products: the Auth API, designed for continuous trust assessments across the user lifecycle, and the Intel API. The latter provides real-time carrier intelligence, including SIM status and number reputation, directly within onboarding workflows. These additions, alongside their existing Verify API and SDKs, aim to bridge the gap between user-provided information and verifiable device and network data, offering a more comprehensive view of user authenticity.

The company has experienced impressive growth, reporting a 6x increase in revenue and customers over the past year, and currently serves prominent clients such as a major global social media platform, Suno, BeReal, Sunday, and Voodoo. This Series A capital will be strategically deployed to expand global telecom partnerships, enhance Intel API coverage across Europe and beyond, invest in its machine learning capabilities for real-time trust decisions, and scale its engineering, infrastructure, and go-to-market teams. This positions Prelude to solidify its role as a comprehensive trust infrastructure provider in the digital economy.