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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.

Crypto M&A Snapshot

Week of February 5 – February 11

Steve Payne
February 11, 2024
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Just when we’d gotten used to three announced transactions a week, the cosmos (with a small “c”) sent us six deals this week.

 

The biggest deal.  Crypto custodian and financial services firm BitGo announced it had acquired Brassica, an alternative assets infrastructure provider.  BitGo CEO Mike Belshe put it well: “We currently have a dichotomy in financial services – one side deals with traditional securities and the other deals with up-and-coming blockchain-based assets and cryptocurrencies. With this acquisition, BitGo becomes the first major financial services firm to be able to provide comprehensive infrastructure support for both traditional private securities and blockchain-based assets, while significantly expanding our global presence.” Brassica offers back-end infrastructure services for private securities and alternative investments, including multi-asset custody, record-keeping and transfer agent services.  This move by BitGo is seen as a step towards offering tokenized securities (RWA).  Terms were not announced, but Brassica investors such as Mercury Fund, Valor Equity Partners and Long Journey Ventures were reported to be receiving shares in BitGo.  Brassica had raised an $8M seed round at a $26M valuation in 2023, and BitGo had most recently raised $100M in 2023 at a $1.75B valuation.

 

Trade finance in Singapore.  Two smaller transactions were announced this week:  xalts, an HK-based provider of infrastructure for programmable assets, acquired struggling Singapore-based digital trade finance network Contour.  Contour had raised $4.9M from Bangkok Bank, Citi Ventures, Standard Chartered, etc. and had signed a few dozen large banks.  Also, Singapore-based global invoice financing network Incomlend acquired fellow Singapore Web3-powered trade finance network LC Lite.  

 

How to acquire a DAO.  Venture studio SYS Labs this week announced taking a majority stake in Uno Re DAO, a provider of DeFi insurance coverage with $15M in on-chain policies.  SYS is behind the Syscoin and Rollux ecosystems, and drove the non-cash merger to strengthen their L2 offerings.  The DAO proposal to have SYSLabs replace some Uno Re DAO Core Contributors with SYS Lab executives was approved by 100% of those voting.  Uno Re gets new leadership and resources to continue its mission.

 

Events

If you missed us at the Satoshi Roundtable last week, Architect Partners will next be at ETH Denver (2/29 – 3/3), and Digital Asset Summit (3/18 – 3/20). Please contact elliot@architectpartners.com or arjun@architectpartners.com if you would like to meet.