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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 22 – April 28

Glenn Gottlieb

May 1, 2024

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25 Crypto Private Financings Raised ~$209M

Rolling 3-Month-Average: $260M

Rolling 52-Week Average: $193M

Facebook envisioned Diem, its stablecoin, as part of a larger project involving Move, a programming language for creating secure financial applications. Diem aimed to be a stable, reliable cryptocurrency for global transactions. Facebook hoped users could send and receive Diem across its platforms (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, etc.) for things like paying friends or online purchases. Move would act as the secure foundation for building applications on the Diem blockchain. Move’s focus on safety aimed to ensure the smooth operation of Diem transactions and prevent errors or hacks. Diem ran into regulatory hurdles and Architect Partners managed the sale of Diem to Silvergate Bank.

What has happened to Move since Diem’s end?

Move’s focus on security was the basis for the creation of the Sui and Aptos blockchains, both developed by ex-Facebook employees who were aware of Move’s benefits. However, many thought the security benefits of Move would be valuable to a much broader audience.

Movement Labs is creating Move-based platforms for broader utilization by delivering modular move-based blockchains starting with M2, a Move Virtual Machine L2 for Ethereum. The focus of these Move Virtual Machines is solving security concerns surrounding smart contract vulnerabilities, improving the developer experience, as well as enabling additional advancements. Movement Labs will also be offering Move Stack, which will allow the Move Virtual Machines to be available on multiple blockchains.

The potential of Move, along with Movement Labs’ proven advancements, was the investment thesis behind a $38M Series A in Movement Labs led by Polychain Capital with participation from Hack VC, Placeholder, Archetype, Maven 11, Robot Ventures, Figment Capital, Nomad Capital, Bankless Ventures, OKX Ventures, dao5, and Aptos Labs.

Movement Labs’ solutions are still under development, and its long-term performance remains to be seen. However, its design holds promise for achieving scalability and security in blockchain applications.