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.

Insights

Week of June 24 – June 30

Glenn Gottlieb
July 3, 2024
DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT

19 Crypto Private Financings Raised ~$158M 

Rolling 3-Month-Average: $253M

Rolling 52-Week Average: $195M

 

In order to take advantage of the powerful capabilities created by blockchain/crypto technologies, the market growth of Web3 applications, especially enterprise applications, is directly tied to the quality and flexibility of development tools.    As a leader in the development tools market, Space and Time (SxT) functions as a verifiable compute layer for Web3, combining a decentralized data warehouse with powerful data processing capabilities. This allows developers to build decentralized applications that can handle complex data operations while maintaining the trust and transparency that are fundamental to blockchain technology.

 

One of the most significant features of Space and Time is its Proof of SQL technology. This innovative zero-knowledge proof system ensures tamperproof computations at scale, allowing developers to run queries against both on-chain and off-chain data with cryptographic guarantees of accuracy. This is particularly important for applications that require high levels of trust and transparency, such as those in financial services or regulatory compliance. The ability to provide verifiable results for complex queries enables more sophisticated and reliable decentralized applications.

 

Among many other features of their development tools, Space and Time importantly bridges the gap between blockchain data and traditional enterprise systems. By offering easy integration with platforms like Microsoft Azure, SxT enables businesses to leverage the benefits of decentralized data warehousing without completely overhauling their existing infrastructure. This seamless connection to blockchain data opens up new possibilities for enterprises looking to build Web3 applications while maintaining their current compute power and security measures.

 

Because Space and Time’s versatility makes it an important tool for a wide range of Web3 use cases, they attracted another $20M in capital by Cypher Capital, with a $320M post-money valuation.   While unannounced, this deal was posted in Pitchbook.