Last month, Chicago tech companies raised nearly $100 million in fresh funding from less than a dozen companies. Uptake led the month’s raises with a huge $40 million round to kick off February, continuing the momentum from January, which saw $115 million raised. But they were quickly followed by some other big capital infusions.
Most of the funding came in the first half of the month, including all of the top five largest rounds, which you can check out below:
4. Payline Data, $5M, Feb. 14
Investors: Recurring Capital Partners
Bio: Payment solutions provider Payline helps business accept money. The company integrates with online and in-store solutions so they can accept credit card payments easily.
News: The $5 million round is the second non-traditional funding for the company, which has a mission of giving back at its heart. Payline latest funding allows it to maintain that mission while taking an infusion of capital to help it grow aggressively.
4. SIM Partners, $5M, Feb. 1
Investors: River Cities Capital Funds, Jump Capital
Bio: SIM Partners automates local marketing with their Velocity platform. By creating location-based marketing content and offering insights into how content affects individual locations, the company’s software helps businesses drive traffic and understand their place in the market.
News: River Cities Capital Funds and Jump Capital returned to fund SIM Partners for a second time. The fresh funding round will help capitalize on the growing “near me” search volumes, which are up 3,400 percent since 2011.
3. Aquilon Energy Services, $19M, Feb. 3
Investors: Citi, Goldman Sachs, Invenergy, Macquarie Group
Bio: Aquilon’s Energy Settlement Network allows energy buyers and sellers to automate the transaction process. With constantly changing prices for many energy products, complicated spreadsheets dominate the market, but Aquilon hopes to replace them with its smarter system
News: Not only are Citi, Goldman Sachs, Invenergy and Macquarie Group all investing in the Lisle-based software developer, they’re also customers. This Series B will help the company grow to 50 employees by the end of the year.
2. SpringCM, $25M, Feb. 8
Investors: Crestline Investors
Bio: SpringCM built its document and contract management software on top of Salesforce, making it simple for businesses to integrate the product into existing workflows.
News: The new funding will help SpringCM grow its tech team, while also facilitating new hires in sales and marketing. The raise is a sign of continued momentum in the past year, raising another $17.5 million last summer.
1. Uptake, $40M, Feb. 1
Investors: Revolution Growth
Bio: Predictive analytics are big business. Uptake provides its services across six major industries, including mining, rail, energy, aviation, retail and construction. It turns a wide range of data points into actionable insights.
News: What do you call a company that’s reached unicorn status twice over? The $40 million funding helped push Uptake to a reported $2 billion valuation, and the company will likely use that funding to fill its 60-plus current openings.
Images via featured companies, Shutterstock
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