As AI compresses the B2B software development lifecycle, more apps are coming to market than ever before. But business buyers aren’t cutting corners on security. Enterprise-grade standards like SAML, SCIM, and role-based access control are no longer nice-to-have for these customers, they’re the expectation. For developers, that’s a problem: these features are notoriously difficult to implement and can distract from shipping product.
Enter Tesseral, which emerges from stealth today with $3.3M in seed funding to take that burden off developers’ shoulders. The San Francisco-based startup is building the open source authentication infrastructure for B2B software, on a mission to make “security-by-default” the new baseline.
“For all the changes that will visit the SaaS industry over the next decade, authentication isn’t going anywhere, and fast-moving teams can’t afford to burn time and energy building in-house solutions,” Ned O’Leary, Tesseral co-founder and CEO explained. “Tesseral empowers startups with secure, production-grade infrastructure that’s fast to implement, easy to maintain, and secure.”
Co-founders Ned O’Leary and Ulysse Carion met while working at Gem, where they bonded over a shared enthusiasm for solving problems most people try to avoid. Ned previously worked at BCG, specializing in M&A and corporate strategy. Ulysse, a veteran security engineer, led identity efforts, including SSO, permissions, and audit logging, at Segment through its $3.2B acquisition by Twilio. Before launching Tesseral, the pair built SSOReady, an open source SAML auth tool used by early adopters like Gumloop, GovAI, and RunReveal.
Tesseral counts a stacked group of early-stage investors, including Dalton Caldwell, Y Combinator managing partner; Jessica Livingston and Paul Graham, Y Combinator co-founders; Calvin French-Owen, co-founder and former chief technology officer of Segment; Steve Bartel and Nick Bushak, co-founders of Gem; and Mike Wiacek, founder of Stairwell; among others.
“Everyone needs auth, but it’s still surprisingly painful,” said Caldwell. “Ned and Ulysse have built something elegant that developers actually want to use—and that’s rare.”
With fresh capital in hand, Tesseral is scaling its open source platform to offer developers flexibility and high-growth companies the enterprise-grade capabilities they need to build with confidence.
The platform is open for early access at www.tesseral.com.
