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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 June 3 – June 9

Glenn Gottlieb
June 13, 2024
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31 Crypto Private Financings Raised ~$284M 

Rolling 3-Month-Average: $268M

Rolling 52-Week Average: $198M

 

Blockchain scalability and interoperability are crucial development topics for blockchain solutions. Scalability is essential to ensure that blockchain networks can handle increasing transaction volumes and user adoption without compromising performance.  Scalability solutions aim to enhance the processing capacity of blockchain networks without sacrificing security or decentralization.

 

Interoperability is critical for enabling seamless communication and data exchange between different blockchain networks. This allows for the creation of more complex and versatile applications that can leverage the unique strengths of various blockchain ecosystems.

 

The successful implementation of scalability and interoperability solutions will be pivotal in unlocking the full potential of blockchain technology. These solutions can enhance the overall functionality, efficiency, and usability of blockchain applications. This, in turn, will facilitate broader adoption across various industries.

 

 Avail Raises $43M Series A

 

Avail is developing a strong solution for blockchain scalability and interoperability, and recently closed on a $43M Series A, bringing total funding to date to $75M.   Founders Fund, DragonFly Capital, CyberFund, SevenX, Figment, Nomad Capital, LocalGlobe, Altos Ventures, and many other VCs participated in the financing. 

 

Avail, a modular blockchain project spun off from Polygon, focuses on enhancing data availability and scalability for blockchain applications. It allows developers to build customizable and scalable applications by decoupling the data availability layer, making it easier to manage data and reduce costs. This approach enables developers to focus on execution and settlement, leading to faster, more efficient, and scalable applications.

 

Avail’s architecture is designed to be protocol-agnostic, open-source, and community-owned. It aims to unify Web3 by providing a comprehensive full-stack architecture comprising three solutions: Avail DA (data availability), Avail Nexus (a cross-chain coordination hub), and Fusion Security (a shared security layer protected by a basket of crypto-assets).  This integrated approach enables seamless interaction and security across different blockchain ecosystems.  Developers are free to choose whichever technologies they like, and can build custom blockchains for their specific use cases.

 

Avail has made significant progress since its spin-off positioning it as a key player in the blockchain scalability and interoperability space.  Recent announcements include:

 

  • In a recent incentivized testnet. Avail DA processed over 118 million transactions and facilitated more than 140GB of data submissions, which is very close to the total data submissions of all L2s in 2023

 

  • Announced a partnership with dWallet Network to introduce programmable native Bitcoin rollups and the launch of its data attestation bridge to Ethereum.