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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.

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Kraken Acquires NinjaTrader for $1.5B: The Largest Ever Bridge Deal

John Kennick
March 21st, 2025
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Transaction Overview

On March 20th, 2025, Kraken, a major cryptocurrency exchange, announced its acquisition of NinjaTrader, a U.S. based retail futures trading platform, for $1.5B. The deal is expected to close in Q2 2025. 

 

 

Target: NinjaTrader

NinjaTrader is financial trading software and brokerage for futures and forex trading, while also providing market analytics, trade simulation, advanced charting. They primarily serve roughly two million retail futures traders. In addition, Ninjatrade is a National Futures Association-registered introducing broker (and thus subject to CFTC oversight), and partners with Future Commission Merchants for its clearing and trade execution capabilities. 

 

NinjaTrader was founded in 2003 by Raymond Deux, is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, and employs approximately 400 team members. In 2019, the company was bought-out by Long Ridge Equity Partners, DRW Venture Capital, and Capital Southwest. The company then went on to raise $86M in debt. Part of this debt was utilized to acquire Tradovate, a cloud-based futures trading platform, which was estimated to be worth $115M in enterprise value. 

 

 

Buyer: Kraken

Kraken is a global cryptocurrency exchange that enables users to buy, sell, and trade cryptocurrencies. The platform offers advanced trading features—including margin trading, futures, and staking—tailored to both businesses and individual users. It also has market share within the stable-to-fiat onramp market – with over 40% of global market share among the major CEX companies. 

 

Notably Kraken is coming off of a strong 2024, where its revenues grew 123% YoY and at a 28% 2-year CAGR to $1.5B. This comes alongside an ARPU (Average-revenue–per-user) of $2,023. Kraken also had an Adjusted EBITDA of $380M. Operationally, the business recently reported over $42.8B assets on the platform, 2.5M funded accounts and a total trade volume of $665B, which is a 148% YoY increase and a 46% 2-year CAGR. 

 

Kraken was founded in 2011 by Jesse Powell and Thanh Luu, the company is headquartered in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and employs over 2,600 team members across 12 countries. The company was last valued at $10.8 billion following an acquisition financing round led by 2B Global, Novos Capital and The K Fund in February 2022, right at the peak of the crypto market. Investors include Tribe Capital, SBI Investments, Nelstone Ventures, Electric Capital, Blockchain Coinvestors, in addition to 166 more investors.  

 

 

Transaction Parameters

Kraken acquired NinjaTrader for $1.5B, with the form of consideration (cash or stock or a combination) being undisclosed. For the foreseeable future, NinjaTrader will act as an independent platform.

 

Comparable transactions include Kraken | CryptoFacilities for $100M, BitStamp | Robinhood for $200M, Satang Crypto Exchange | Kasikornban for $102.8M, Orama | BTG Pactual for $97M, Coinsquare & Coinsmart | WonderFi for $70M, LedgerX | MIAX for $50M. 

 

 

Strategic Rationale

This acquisition allows Kraken to expand its product offering to include U.S. futures for both crypto and traditional markets, which aligns with Kraken’s broader multi-asset-class strategy and ultimate entry into equities trading and payments. 

 

The press release lays out 4 clear areas of synergy: 1) Kraken acquires NinjaTraders CFTC-registered FCM license allowing for crypto futures and derivatives in the U.S., 2) Kraken’s U.K. and E.U. MiFID and Australian securities licenses accelerates NinjaTrader’s global expansion, 3) both customer bases can now trade crypto, futures and traditional financial products, and 4) Kraken clients get access to NinjaTrader’s analytics, execution engines and liquidity, while Kraken provides crypto-liquidity and trading UI. 

 

 

Architect Partners’ Observations

Large crypto native firms are turning attention to inorganic growth once again. A very strong Q4 has helped increase the capital to use and firms are increasingly eager to deploy.

 

For Kraken, this is a product growth driven acquisition. As they’ve previously expressed interest in expanding capabilities beyond crypto, adding complementary futures trading is an easy step, allowing not only crypto futures access directly but expanding to other asset classes.

 

Kraken’s strategy diverges from their main US competitor, Coinbase, in that Coinbase seems focused on all things crypto while Kraken is leveraging its crypto foundation to expand into the wider financial services world. WIth a wider product focus, there are more opportunities for inorganic growth.

 

We see this transaction as a good sign for capital market activity. We always love “bridge transactions” where traditional financial services firms acquire a crypto native. This shows a longer term optimism that the industry can be part of the larger ecosystem. A reverse bridge deal, like Kraken’s deal here, is also a good sign with similar positive signals.

 

Additionally, sizable deals generally force competitors to pay attention and see if they need to act. We know several players that have moved their acquisition interest from the passive  “we’ll take a look” to a more active posture of “let’s see what’s out there”. As bankers, we love to see it.

 

Sources 

PitchBook, NinjaTrader Press Release, Kraken Press Release, The Block