Prelude Raises $20M to Fix Onboarding and Trust

Jan de Vries · 2026-05-20

### The Problem with Onboarding Today Let's be real for a second. If you've ever tried to verify a user's identity online, you know the pain. SMS bills are through the roof, real users get frustrated and leave at the OTP screen, and fraudsters slip through the cracks until it's too late. It's a mess. Prelude, a Paris-based startup, wants to change that. They just raised $20 million in Series A funding to scale their platform that helps companies verify and protect users across their entire lifecycle. ### Who's Behind the Check? The round was led by 20VC, with help from Singular, Seedcamp, Deel, and FDJ Ventures. A bunch of big-name angel investors also jumped in, including execs from Synthesia, Aikido Security, Revolut, Pennylane, Grindr, Cleo, and Match Group. Paul Bonnet from 20VC put it bluntly: "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."  ### What Makes Prelude Different? Founded in 2023 by Matias Berny and Quentin Le Bras, Prelude combines telecom data, behavioral signals, and machine learning to make continuous trust decisions. Instead of just checking a phone number once, they build a trust profile for each user that updates over time. The old way of doing things is broken. CAPTCHAs don't stop bots anymore, and a single fraud signal won't tell you who's really there. As Matias Berny says, "Telling a real user from a fake one is now a business intelligence problem, not a checkbox." ### New Products to Watch Prelude just launched two new products: - **Auth API**: Runs continuous trust checks across the full user lifecycle. - **Intel API**: Gives real-time carrier intelligence like SIM status and number reputation, right into your onboarding flow. Combine these with their existing Verify API and front-end SDKs, and you've got a stack that closes the gap between what a user claims and what their device and network actually reveal. ### The Bottom Line Prelude says companies working with them save 40% on verification costs on average, while improving conversion rates. They've grown revenue and customers 6x over the past year, and now work with some of the biggest social media platforms, plus names like Suno, BeReal, Sunday, and Voodoo. If you're tired of broken onboarding and want to actually trust your users, Prelude might be worth a look.