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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.

Crypto Public Companies Snapshot

Crypto Public Companies Snapshot

Todd White
September 15, 2023

SEC chair Gensler testified before the Senate Banking Committee this week. Though the legislators’ attention was more focused on AI and ESG, Mr. Gensler’s crypto comments echoed his familiar refrain about rampant fraud and manipulation in the sector. He’ll face another round of scrutiny from the House Finance Committee at the end of the month, where he may face more pointed questions about his approach to crypto. Gensler has faced severe criticism, with some suggesting an intent to kill startups such as Coinbase and Ripple and to allow the trusted old guard such as Blackrock, Goldman, and JPMorgan to take over the digital assets market.

 

Yet outside the walls of the courtroom and legislature, there are increasing signs of collaboration, not competition, between the old and the new. For example, Deutsche Bank, the largest and traditional German bank, has partnered with Swiss crypto firm Taurus to explore digital asset custody and tokenization. Franklin Templeton, the giant asset manager that made waves earlier this year with a tokenized money market fund, joined the spot Bitcoin ETF crowd with its own application this week. PayPal has teamed up with Paxos on its stablecoin initiative. And the London Stock Exchange Group is exploring blockchain enhancements to traditional asset trading capabilities, though whether an internal or collaborative effort is unclear. These are but a few of many examples, and we expect to learn more before the year is out.

 

In the midst of this collaborative current, Coinbase has introduced a Web3 wallet through its Prime unit, intended as a tool enabling institutions to interact with on-chain applications and gain access to NFTs and other aspects of the DeFi world. Opportunities for institutional integration are exciting on their own, but the move also highlights the impressive scope of activity at Coinbase. Their new Layer 2 blockchain, Base, hit record daily transaction volumes this week after bringing the breadth of Coinbase’s reach to startups such as the social app Friend.tech. Coinbase kicked off an institutional crypto lending platform earlier this month, with the intent to fill the void left by numerous beleaguered or defunct lenders. And on Wednesday, Mr. Armstrong announced their decision to integrate the Bitcoin Lightning network, adding their muscular endorsement to numerous other prominent exchanges that support Lightning as a scalable and cost-efficient solution for Bitcoin transactions.

 

Back in the courtroom, Coinbase is of course leading the industry’s battle with the SEC, and yesterday Mr. Armstrong entered another fray by endorsing DeFi protocols and cautioning the CFTC against a regulation-by-enforcement approach in its recent actions against Opyn, ZeroEx, and Deridex. This combination of commercial collaboration and regulatory confrontation is certainly a lot to take on, yet it may be just what our industry needs as this eventful year nears its final quarter.