ARCHITECT SUCCESSES

SEE ALL
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.

Crypto M&A Snapshot

Week of February 26 – March 3

Steve Payne
March 3, 2024
DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT

Four M&A deals were announced this week, typical for 2024 to date.

 

One deal had an announced value: bankrupt crypto exchange FTX agreed to sell FTX Europe back to its founders for $32.7 million. This resolution comes three years after Swiss startup Digital Assets AG, later named FTX Europe, was acquired by FTX for $323 million.  Cointelegraph reported that Coinbase had tried to acquire the business several times, and that they also had interest from Trek Labs and Crypto.com

 

Ottr Wallet was acquired by Tools for Humanity, the developer of the Worldcoin protocol. Solana-based Ottr launched their self-custody wallet 18 months ago and got to over 25,000 active monthly users.  They had raised $3.1M in a pre-seed round led by Race Capital.  The Ottr team will lead the development of Worldcoin’s consumer application and mobile wallet, and will sunset the Ottr wallet.

 

Crossmint, an enterprise blockchain platform, has acquired Winter, a two-year-old Y Combinator and Goodwater-backed NFT payments infrastructure startup.  Valuation was not disclosed, although Crossmint reported it was an all-cash deal.  Crossmint offers custodial wallets, smart wallets and a NFT minting platform to some 30,000 enterprise customers.

Winter offered an NFT payment infrastructure allowing users to purchase NFTs with fiat or cross-chain payments.  Simultaneously, Crossmint announced a new cross-chain payments product, at least partially based on the Winter code.

 

Finally, crypto investment firm ​​Deus X Capital agreed to purchase institutional digital assets firm HAYVN for an undisclosed amount.  Deus X launched with $1B in assets and recently announced a $250M+ investment initiative in UAE with Bridgetower.  So far one deal has been announced, a $5.5M seed round for Saltwater Games.  Swiss-headquartered HAYVN  provides trading, asset management, custody and payment solutions. HAYVN received Series A financing from Hilbert Group and Red Acre in 2021.

 

Events

Architect Partners will be at Digital Asset Summit (3/18 – 3/20). Please contact elliot@architectpartners.com or arjun@architectpartners.com to meet.