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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.

Financing

Week of February 3- February 9

Todd White
February 12, 2025
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February 3 – February 9 (Published February 12th)

PERSPECTIVES by Todd White

 

31 Crypto Private Financings Raised: $297.0M

Rolling 3-Month-Average: $171.9M

Rolling 52-Week Average: $205.9M

 

While many of us were forced to endure the “great purge” from our vantage in the US, trusting that political winds would eventually shift in favor of regulatory clarity over a combative approach to crypto and blockchain technologies in North America, some of the world’s most preeminent financial institutions were making forward-thinking moves to embrace the technology. Nomura’s launch of the Swiss-based Laser Digital trading and investing platform, and the co-founding of institutional digital custodian Komainu come to mind. As does Standard Chartered with their launch of Zodia Markets and Zodia Custody for institutional trading and custody, the co-founding of the Partior payments network along with JP Morgan and DBS, and numerous venture investments to help grow the ecosystem. There are several others as well, including the Japanese financial powerhouse SBI Group.

 

SBI has been one of the most active traditional financial institutions in the crypto and blockchain space, with significant investments, strategic partnerships, and presence across multiple segments—from exchanges to mining, institutional crypto services, and blockchain-based financial products. These include operating their own crypto exchange, SBI VC Trade, providing institutional custody through SBI Digital Asset Holdings, collaborating with Swiss Digital Exchange for institutional-grade crypto custody and trading infrastructure, and providing early financial support for market leaders such as Ripple, Securitize, and Oasis Pro Markets.

 

This week SBI expanded its position at the intersection of traditional finance and digital assets by leading a EUR 140M round and becoming the majority owner of Solaris, a German Banking-as-a-Service provider of regulatory-compliant banking infrastructure, including digital asset custody and payments services. The round was co-led by Boerse Stuttgart Group and represents a strategic move that will expand SBI Group’s footprint in Europe and strengthen their ability to offer regulated digital asset services, embedded finance, and institutional crypto solutions in the region.

 

While not without risk—including the complexity of integrating Solaris’s capabilities with SBI’s existing ventures while navigating the evolving European regulatory landscape—this move aligns with SBI’s broader vision of bridging traditional and digital finance and could leave them well positioned for the emergence of regulated crypto banking in the EU and beyond.

 

It should be a very interesting landscape indeed. In a recent interview at Davos, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, who has been cautious to date, predicted that the US banking system will “come in hard on the transactions side” if regulatory clarity becomes real, insisting that BoA has “hundreds” of blockchain patents already, and a strategy to enter the field. If and when that comes to pass, he and his US peers may find that many global institutions are well out in front.

 

Contact ryan@architectpartners.com to schedule a meeting.