Spring Labs, a blockchain startup that was created by members of the founding team of Chicago fintech startup Avant, has landed $23 million from a handful of notable investors.
Spring Labs announced Wednesday that the $23 million Series A round was led by GreatPoint Ventures. Other backers include August Capital, General Motors Ventures, RRE Ventures, Galaxy Digital, Multicoin Capital, The Pritzker Group and CardWorks.
Founded in 2017, Spring Labs is building blockchain products that help financial services companies with identity verification and fraud prevention. Its initial offering, called Spring Protocol, includes products such as Spring Verify for identity verification, Spring Defense for fraud monitoring, and Spring Protect for loan stacking prevention.
For General Motors, the strategic investment will allow the automotive giant to partner with Spring Labs through its automotive finance arm, GM Financial.
Spring Labs made headlines last year when it named Gary Cohn, the former chief economic aide to President Donald Trump and president of Goldman Sachs, to its board of directors. Since then it's made several other big personnel moves, naming Joel Eckhause, the former CRO and COO of Renew Financial, as its COO, and David Kravitz, a former cybersecurity advisor with the NSA, as its director of research.
The startup has offices in Los Angeles and Chicago, and was named one of Chicago Inno's 19 Startups to Watch in 2019. Spring Lab's leadership team splits time between Chicago and LA, the company said.
Spring Labs' founders consist of John Sun, a co-founder of Avant; Adam Jiwan, a founding board member of Avant; and Anna Fridman, the general counsel at Avant.
Avant, one of Chicago's most valuable tech startups, has raised $1.8 billion in debt and equity.
