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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

Week of April 15 – April 21

Glenn Gottlieb
April 24, 2024
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43 Crypto Private Financings Raised ~$126M 

Rolling 3-Month-Average: $245M

Rolling 52-Week Average: $183M

 

Tokenization of real-world assets is a process that involves converting physical assets, such as real estate, art, or commodities, into digital tokens on a blockchain. These tokens represent ownership or a share in the asset and can be bought, sold, or traded. This process enhances liquidity, accessibility, and efficiency in traditionally illiquid markets.

 

The market for tokenized real world assets (“RWA”) is expected to grow significantly with a total market value of tokenized assets expected to significantly exceed $16 trillion by 2030 according to some reports.

 

There are many leading DeFi platforms supporting RWA tokenization.   Centrifuge has taken a slightly different approach than most by serving as a bridge between traditional finance and DeFi and bringing non-crypto asset structured credit markets to DeFi.   Centrifuge allows borrowers to tokenize RWA and use them as collateral to secure financing in a cost-effective and fully transparent manner to connect borrowers with investors.  

 

Last week, Centrifuge announced a $15M Series A funding round led by ParaFi Capital and Greenfield.  Additional investors included Arrington Capital, Bloccelerate, Borderless Capital, Circle Ventures, Edessa Capital, Gnosis, IOSG Ventures, Modular Capital, ProtoCap, Re7 Capital, Scytale Digital, Skynet Trading, Stake Capital, The Spartan Group, TRGC and Wintermute Ventures.

 

The funds will be used to scale and expand the business.   Centrifuge is also planning an institutional-grade lending market for RWAs, built on Base and integrated with Coinbase Verification. These integrations will allow institutions to quickly and safely participate with real-world assets.

 

Continued funding of tokenization of RWA is critical for economic activity going forward, as it democratizes investment, enhances liquidity, drives efficiency and transparency across diverse asset classes, and creates avenues for innovation to rethink certain financial markets.