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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

Sygnum Raises $40M

Michael S. Klena
January 30, 2024
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On January 25, 2024, Swiss-based global digital asset bank, Sygnum, raised $40 million in a strategic growth round, valuing the company at over $900 million post-money.

Transaction Overview

On January 25, 2024, Swiss-based global digital asset bank, Sygnum, raised $40 million in a strategic growth round, valuing the company at over $900 million post-money. The round is led by global asset manager, Azimut Holding, and is joined by other new and existing strategic and financial investors.

 

Company Description

Sygnum is a Switzerland and Singapore-focused digital asset bank serving high-net-worth individuals,  institutional investors, banks, corporates, and DLT foundations. Their service offering includes digital asset banking, asset tokenization, asset management, custody, staking, trading, and lending. By the end of 2023, Sygnum achieved an annualized revenue run rate of $100 million and reached positive cash flow in Q4 2023. The company disclosed $3.5 billion in AUM in the same year, an increase from $2 billion at the end of 2021. The client base also grew from 1,000 at the end of 2021 to 1,700 by the end of 2023.

 

The company has ~260 employees and operates in Singapore, Switzerland, UAE, and Luxembourg, with a client base from over 60 countries. Sygnum is licensed as a banking and securities dealer by Switzerland’s FINMA and holds a CMS license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. In June 2023, it received in-principle approval for a Major Payments Institutional Licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Sygnum expanded to Luxembourg in December 2022 and acquired Financial Services Permission from Abu Dhabi’s ADGM FSRA in March 2023. Some notable clients include large Swiss banks such as PostFinance, Zuger Kantonalbank, and Luzerner Kantonalbank.

 

Sygnum also has a venture capital arm with a $75M fund that has invested in nine early-stage crypto companies.

 

Funding

Sygnum has raised $40 million in its strategic growth round at a $900 million post-money valuation. The company now has several financial and strategic investors such as Azimut Holding, Sun Hung Kai & Co., Meta Investments, Animoca Brands, Wemade, SBI Holdings, SCB 10X, and others.

 

Funds from this financing round will increase Sygnum’s presence in new global markets and enable quicker regulated product development, like its B2B (bank-to-bank) platform. This platform is currently utilized by more than 15 banks and financial institutions worldwide for cryptocurrency services.

 

In January 2022, Sygnum raised $90 million in their Series B at a post-money valuation of $800 million led by Sun Hung Kai & Co. Previous funding details were not disclosed.

 

Competition

Sygnum competes with others in the digital assets banking space. Some competitors include SEBA Bank and Bitcoin Suisse.

 

Architect Partners’ Perspective

As we discussed in our 2023 year-end report, financings overall were muted in the past 12 months, and the malaise was more pronounced in mid-sized financings ($25-$75M) like Sygnum.  It is our understanding that Sygnum has been in the market for nearly a year and finally gained traction as the overall crypto trading volumes (and the attached revenues) rose from the trough in Q4.    

 

The Swiss regulator, FINMA, is under extreme pressure due to the Credit Suisse implosion, and we believe granting new crypto bank licenses is not a priority.  As one of only 2 licenses granted in Switzerland, the value of the license itself can be driving a slight uptick in valuation along with a general improving sentiment of the market.  We view the valuation at the top end of the range, but caveat that we do not have full information on their revenues. 

 

While it’s not a milestone in the capital raising environment, it is a nice marker that things may be opening up to average flows.

 

Sources 

PitchBook, Company Website, Press Release