West Loop to open new adtech firm with $3.7M in funding

As the city has been hush-hush about the Amazon HQ2 negotiations, Chicago just landed another major tech deal.

Announced this week, IntuiLab a French adtech firm that specializes in content for interactive displays has raised a $3.7 million Series A round with the goal of expanding its operations in the United States and more specifically, in Chicago – according to built in chicago.

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Kurt Haller, who will lead IntuiLab’s new North American headquarters, said the company expects to announce the location of its new West Loop office by the end of the month, according to the news outlet. Haller also expects the office to expand to about 16 employees by the end of next year while hiring for several roles across sales and engineering.

And according to Haller, the choice to expand to Chicago was based on multiple factors, according to the news outlet.

“IntuiLab has more than 1,500 customers across more than 80 countries, with 50 percent based in the U.S.,” said Haller to the news outlet. “We want to open the office in Chicago because of the vibrant tech scene, access to talent and central location to reach customers throughout the U.S.”

IntuiLab’s software allows for advertisers to craft touchscreen-enabled content for digital signs — such as mall directories, interactive kiosks as well tablets — without having to write code. The technology is device-agnostic and supports a range of multimedia formats including videos, 3D models, maps and full websites, according to the news outlet.

But this isn’t the only tech-win for Chicago, a Belgian software firm, Showpad, announced plans to double its Chicago office following a $25 million funding round late last month. According to the news outlet, just last month – Foursquare also announced a Chicago engineering office.

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Crain’s also reported that Chicago was potentially up for a new Google office that would be home to 1,000 to 5,000 employees, in a report published earlier this month. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has also pledged to toss Chicago’s hat in the ring for Apple’s new campus, which was announced by the Cupertino company back in January, according to the news outlet.

Chicago is slowly building a second Silicon Valley with big tech names like Salesforce, Uber, Google, HERE and SAP.