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Champ Titles Raised $18M from Point72 Ventures
Champ Titles Raised $18M from Point72 Ventures

Architect Partners was the exclusive Financial Advisor to Champ Titles.

Transaction Overview

On March 27, 2024, Cleveland-based digital title and registration platform Champ Titles announced an $18 million Series C equity round led by Point72 Ventures with participation by existing investors.

Company Description

Champ Titles provides a digital title and registration suite to streamline the vehicle titling process. Their platform enables the creation of legal, digital titles for easy transfer and verification, serving insurance carriers, lenders, state governments, auto dealers, and owners. Stakeholders, including state motor vehicle departments, lenders, and vehicle owners, benefit from a unified and transparent system, where all information is readily accessible and transaction times are markedly reduced. The governance of the digital platform is established through clear guidelines, ensuring all parties adhere to the updated processes and regulations.

Champ Titles’ success is measured by the elimination of more than 5 million pieces of paper annually on average per state; a reduction in processing time from 40-60 days to a matter of hours; increased productivity of DMV title clerks processing more than five times as many titles per day; and the improved experience for consumers in each state that has adopted Champ Titles’ solutions. Over the last twelve months, the company has successfully onboarded new states including New Jersey, Kentucky, and Illinois, and expanded its relationship with West Virginia by creating the first National Digital Titling Clearinghouse (NDTC). Through these efforts, the company has grown rapidly with revenue increasing by more than 300% year over year. 

Founded in 2018 by CEO, Shane Bigelow, the company now has 63 employees and is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. 

Funding

In this Series C funding round, Champ Titles raised $18M from Point72 Ventures and existing investors including W.R. Berkley Corporation, Eos Venture Partners, Guidewire Software, and Rev1 Ventures, bringing the total amount raised since inception to $45M. 

In the prior Series B round, Champ Titles raised $13M from Guidewire Software, Eos Venture Partners, and Ally Ventures.

Before that, Champ Titles raised $13.5M in 2021 in a Series A. Emergents, now Architect Partners, served as the exclusive Financial Advisor for that financing. 

Competition

Champ Titles’ biggest competitors are existing state DMVs deciding to be a software company and developing solutions on their own or via large systems developers.  However, they also compete with other digital title networks such as Cario and Oxhead Alpha/Tezos. In addition, technology-enabled DMV solutions such as Fast Enterprises are seen as competitive but don’t offer the same efficacy.

 

Architect Partners’ Perspective

Champ Titles’ SaaS-based solutions present a compelling example of blockchain-enabled infrastructure solving real-world problems.  By focusing on the needs and pain points of legacy auto title, registration, and lien processing, Champ has leveraged the power of blockchain to transform critical government services.  The result is exponentially accelerated processing time for DMV constituents, with improved accuracy and reduced cost.  Yet Champ’s solutions capture many key benefits of on-chain data processing – which include trust, transparency, data integrity, security, and efficiency – without users even being aware of their blockchain foundations.  

While much attention is focused on recent resilience in crypto asset prices, we believe 2024 will see significant growth in non-speculative enterprise applications for distributed ledger technology.  Champ’s successful raise demonstrates investor interest in practical and scalable solutions to real-world problems.

Insights

April 29 – May 5

Glenn Gottlieb
May 8, 2024
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54 Crypto Private Financings Raised ~$219M 

Rolling 3-Month-Average: $265M

Rolling 52-Week Average: $193M

 

Last week saw a spike in investment activity with 54 financings.  It’s been quite a while since this level of activity has been seen!  Perhaps funding activity is warming up with the weather.  It’s important to note that 29 of those financings did not disclose the amount of capital raised, creating an artificially low value for capital invested.

 

Just a few weeks ago we wrote about the importance of tokenizing real-world assets when covering BlackRock’s introduction of their USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund.  Last week, this important topic took center stage again with two significant fundings, underscoring the growing influence of this market disrupting technology.

 

By creating digital tokens on a blockchain that represent ownership rights in physical assets like real estate, art, and commodities, or with financial assets, tokenization unlocks new possibilities. Blockchain technology boasts enhanced security and transparency, streamlining processes, reducing friction in asset management, enabling around the clock trading, and significantly increasing liquidity and access across a wider range of assets.

 

Securitize – is a leader in digitizing financial assets through blockchain technology.   Blackrock led a $47M funding, which also included Hamilton Lane, ParaFi Capital, and Tradeweb Markets.   For their investors, Securitize currently enables access to Hamilton Lane’s Senior Credit Opportunities Fund and their Equity Opportunities Fund V, as well as is the transfer agent for Blackrock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, the first tokenized fund issued on Ethereum. 

 

Ironlight – is a recently announced project by TradFi veterans, including the former trading heads of Schroders, with a former CEO of TD Bank as an advisor.  They aim to create a regulated marketplace for trading tokenized real-world assets. They will focus on tokenizing private securities with existing value, and which are typically illiquid.  Ironlight did not disclose the investors in their $12M round beyond noting that a significant portion came from investors with Wall Street backgrounds.  

 

The rapid advancement in this investing infrastructure is exciting, and will surely disrupt the status quo.