- Prelude, a Paris startup, has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by 20VC
- Prelude’s platform uses telecom data, device intelligence, network signals, and behavioural patterns to build a continuous trust profile for each user
- Over the past year, the company has grown its revenue and customer base by six times. Prelude now handles user verification for one of the world’s largest social networks.
When Matias Berny and Quentin Le Bras worked on SMS verification at Zenly, they discovered that up to 30% of the budget was lost to fraud from fake intermediaries. Older providers either missed this problem or had no reason to fix it.
After Snap bought Zenly and later shut it down in 2023, the duo started Prelude to help other companies avoid similar losses. Its platform uses telecom data, device intelligence, network signals, and behavioural patterns to build a continuous trust profile for each user.
The Paris-based startup has secured $20 million in Series A funding, led by 20VC. Singular, Seedcamp, Deel, and FDJ Ventures also took part in the round, bringing the total funding to $27 million and matching sixfold growth in revenue and customers over the past year.
Angel investors include Steffen Tjerrild, co-founder and COO of Synthesia; Antoine Le Nel,
global chief growth and marketing officer at Revolut; Felix Blossier, co-founder and COO of Pennylane; George Arison, CEO of Grindr; and Barney Hussey-Yeo, founder and CEO of Cleo.
“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. The phone number is becoming the strongest anchor we have, and with the Intel API, it carries more trust than any password or one-time code ever did,” says Berny.
Instead of just checking users at signup, Prelude makes ongoing trust decisions throughout each session. Its platform handles phone number verification in more than 230 countries, using smart routing to pick the best providers for cost and fraud prevention. The company claims customers usually save 40% on verification costs and see better conversion rates
Prelude’s main competitors include Twilio Verify, which leads in enterprise SMS verification, and Telesign, which provides phone-based identity and fraud risk scoring. Neither competitor offers the full combination of verification, device intelligence, session management, and carrier-grade network data that Prelude does.
“Prelude is the only platform solving all three pains at once: their customers are cutting verification costs by over 40%, converting more users, and actually getting a response when something breaks. Matias and Quentin solved this at Zenly, then built it for everyone else,” adds Paul Bonnet, general partner at 20VC.
The fresh investment will help Prelude launch two new products that let companies run continuous trust checks throughout the user lifecycle and provide real-time, carrier-grade network data during onboarding, offering more insight than self-reported information alone.
