Prelude has raised €17.2 million in a Series A funding round led by 20VC, with additional participation from Singular, Seedcamp, Deel, and FDJ Ventures.
Founded in 2023 by Matias Berny and Quentin Le Bras, the company develops onboarding and identity infrastructure designed to help businesses verify users, reduce fraud, and improve customer conversion across digital platforms.
What The Company Does
Prelude provides a unified trust platform that combines identity verification, fraud prevention, device intelligence, and continuous authentication into a single system.
The company uses telecom network data, behavioural analysis, and machine learning models to make ongoing trust assessments throughout a user’s lifecycle rather than relying solely on one-time verification checks. Its platform is designed to help businesses identify fraudulent behaviour earlier while reducing friction for legitimate users during onboarding and authentication processes.
Prelude focuses particularly on challenges linked to onboarding abandonment, verification costs, and fraud detection delays. By consolidating multiple trust and verification functions into one infrastructure layer, the company aims to simplify operational complexity for digital businesses.
According to Prelude, customers using the platform reduce verification-related costs by around 40% while also improving onboarding completion and conversion rates.
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Market Context / Industry Background
As digital platforms increasingly rely on automated onboarding and AI-driven systems, identity verification and fraud prevention are becoming more complex. Traditional authentication tools such as CAPTCHAs and one-time passwords are proving less effective against increasingly sophisticated fraud operations and automated bot activity.
This has created growing demand for continuous trust infrastructure capable of analysing behavioural patterns, device signals, and telecom-level intelligence in real time. Companies are increasingly shifting from static identity checks toward dynamic risk assessment models that continuously evaluate user legitimacy across sessions and interactions.
The rise of AI-generated fraud and synthetic identities is also accelerating investment into more adaptive trust systems that can balance security requirements with user experience and conversion performance.
At the same time, regulatory pressure around digital identity is increasing, particularly in regions such as the European Union, where frameworks like GDPR and upcoming AI regulations require stricter transparency in how user data is collected and processed. This is pushing trust infrastructure providers to design systems that are not only accurate but also explainable and privacy-preserving.
Alongside this, enterprises in fintech, marketplaces, and gig economy platforms are integrating these solutions earlier in the user journey to reduce onboarding friction while maintaining compliance. As fraud techniques evolve alongside generative AI tools, the arms race between attackers and security systems is expected to intensify, making adaptive, real-time verification a core layer of digital infrastructure rather than a supplementary feature.
Founder / Investor Commentary
Co-founder and CEO Matias Berny said the company views digital trust as an intelligence problem rather than a simple verification step.
“The old playbook is broken. CAPTCHAs don’t stop bots anymore, and a single fraud signal won’t tell you who’s really there,” he said.
Berny added that phone numbers and telecom intelligence are becoming increasingly important anchors for digital identity verification, particularly as authentication systems evolve beyond passwords and basic one-time codes.
Growth Plans / Use Of Funds
The new funding will support expansion of Prelude’s trust infrastructure platform, further product development, and scaling of its machine learning and fraud intelligence capabilities.
The company plans to continue enhancing its integrated onboarding and authentication systems while expanding adoption among businesses seeking unified fraud prevention and user verification tools.
About Prelude
Prelude is a trust infrastructure company focused on user verification, fraud prevention, and authentication systems for digital platforms. Founded in 2023 and headquartered in Paris, the company combines telecom intelligence, behavioural analysis, and machine learning to help businesses manage secure onboarding and continuous user trust across the full customer lifecycle.
