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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.

Alerts

HashKey Raises $100M

Eric F. Risley
February 1, 2024
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On January 15, 2024, Hong Kong-based digital asset financial services firm, HashKey Group, raised $100 million in a Series A funding round, valuing the company at over $1.3 billion.

Transaction Overview

On January 15, 2024, Hong Kong-based digital asset financial services firm, HashKey Group, raised $100 million in a Series A funding round, valuing the company at over $1.3 billion, with investments from undisclosed strategic partners, institutional backers, and Web3 entities which include OKX Ventures.

 

Company Description

HashKey Group, based in Hong Kong with 120 employees, is an institutional-focused exchange and venture capital investor. 

 

Founded in 2018, HashKey Exchange & Custody offers a suite of crypto capabilities to Asian institutional investors including brokerage services, trading services, staking infrastructure that supports over 40 chains, and Multi-Party Computation (MPC) based custody capabilities. HashKey Exchange, their largest business, is a crypto asset exchange regulated by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, with 155,000 registered users and a daily trading volume of $630 million for the past month. HashKey Exchange also offers a brokerage service for accredited investors, providing secure crypto asset trading with a minimum size of $100,000, such as USDT/USD and BTC/USD pairs.

 

HashKey has also announced several products intended to support the emergence of so-called Web 3.0 DApps.  These include HashKey DID (Digital Identify), a digital wallet named HashKey Me, and a software developer support effort named HashKey Hub.

 

Founded in 2015, HashKey Capital manages venture capital fund investing in blockchain projects, including tokens and equity, from pre-seed to Series B. They have $1B+ assets under management across 3 funds. Significant investments include dYdX, FalconX, Animoca Brands, Polkadot, and many others, totaling 268 total investments according to PitchBook.

 

Funding

HashKey’s first publicly disclosed funding is this Series A financing although prior funding is implied.  HashKey failed to disclose specific investors, rather opting for more generic descriptions of types of institutions, other than OKX Ventures.  OKX Ventures is a $100M fund owned by OKX, the large crypto exchange.  They have 142 active companies in their portfolio today, according to Pitchbook.  Post-money valuation of this financing is over $1.3B.

 

The new capital will be used to enhance HashKey’s Web3 ecosystem, expand its Hong Kong-licensed business products, and support global growth in compliance with regulations. This follows the company’s acquisition of a Capital Markets Services (CMS) license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

 

Competition

HashKey Group competes with a broad array of other crypto brokers and exchanges such as OKX, Bithumb, Binance, Kucoin, Bitstamp, and Crypto.com among others.  HashKey’s Web 3.0 DApp efforts are designed to complement building products on a variety of blockchains, complementing those efforts more than competing directly.

 

Architect Partners’ Perspective

Can you say Deja Vu?

 

Crypto asset investment platforms bear a striking resemblance to traditional investment platforms and asset managers.  One may reasonably conclude that they are fundamentally a crypto assets specialized version of Robinhood, TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, and others of that ilk.

 

Growth will driven by regulatory clarity, the evolution and maturation of the investment theses for specific individual crypto assets (also referred to as tokens), new products like the recent Bitcoin ETFs and futures markets, the broadening of investor participation, and perhaps most importantly, the building of trust and confidence in the legitimacy of both the asset class and the companies and projects that support the industry.

  

Sources 

PitchBook, Company Website, Press Release