Paris-based SMS verification startup Prelude, which simplifies mobile onboarding with unified APIs, has secured $20 million in a Series A funding round led by 20VC, with participation from Singular, Seedcamp, Deel, and FDJ UNITED Ventures.
- Founded in 2023 by Matias Berny and Quentin Le Bras, Prelude develops a trust and identity verification infrastructure for digital platforms. It combines real-time signals such as phone verification data, device integrity, carrier and network information, and behavioral patterns into a unified risk engine that continuously generates trust scores to allow, challenge, or block users across signup, login, and ongoing sessions.
- The company had previously raised $8 million in 2024 from Singular and Seedcamp to expand its onboarding and fraud prevention API suite.
Details of the deal
- The funding will be used to scale its trust infrastructure through deeper telecom partnerships, expanded API coverage across Europe, further investment in machine learning-based fraud detection, and team expansion across engineering, partnerships, and customer success.
“Most companies running phone verification get scammed: pump fraud, opaque pricing, nonexistent customer support. 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. We are also excited about the launch of their Auth product," explains Paul Bonnet, General Partner at 20VC.
