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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 March 03 – March 09

Todd White
March 12, 2025
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March 03 – March 09 (Published March 12th)

PERSPECTIVES by Todd White

 

26 Crypto Private Financings Raised: $437.1M

Rolling 3-Month-Average: $197.5M

Rolling 52-Week Average: $211.6M

 

We believe four foundational factors are useful signals for assessing the innovation and maturation of emerging technologies: capital invested, number of users, value created, and corporate strategy enacted through M&A. In our “Family Ties” series, first published in January 2024 (here) and updated last month (here), we use these factors to compare the Internet and Crypto to reveal some striking conclusions. For example, we found that in 2024, the value created in the Crypto sector surpassed that of the Internet at the same stage in its respective life cycle—an exciting and potentially “breakout” moment for investors.

 

However, other factors continue to lag, most notably the number of users. There are, of course, myriad causes for this dearth of “useful things” beyond pure speculation. But the difficulty in transitioning practical everyday applications from Web2 to Web3 is likely high on anyone’s list.

 

The truth is that Crypto and blockchain present businesses with a thorny mix of technical, regulatory, and user-centric challenges to adoption. Chief among them is the sheer complexity of blockchain and dApps, which often requires specialized expertise and a steep learning curve, with both time and financial investments that can exceed the means of many businesses. Technical limitations, such as slower processing speeds and high transaction cost, also constrain scalability and adoption.

 

Regulatory uncertainty, particularly in the U.S., has created (unnecessary?) compliance risks and strategic hesitancy. While this may now be changing, the need to navigate unclear legal frameworks has complicated long-term business planning and adoption. The lack of intuitive user interfaces, closely tied to the technical challenges above, remains a persistent hindrance. The need to manage wallets, transaction fees, and blockchain interactions must be simplified to drive broader acceptance among non-technical users. Interoperability across chains and integration with legacy Web2 systems is another persistent challenge. The risk of disrupting critical workflows can incite caution and even fear of destabilizing core models for early movers seeking to adopt untested Web3 strategies.

 

Endless is a cloud-based protocol designed to simplify the transition to the Web3 world of decentralized blockchain technologies. Their platform combines essential Web3 components, such as blockchain networks, data storage, and messaging, with an AI agent toolchain and a simplified interface tailored for developers familiar with traditional web programming. Their goal is to accelerate adoption by lowering the technical barriers to entry for mainstream developers and businesses, with a system designed to handle large numbers of transactions quickly and at low cost.

 

Our analysis suggests this work is sorely needed. And investors seem to agree, supporting Endless this week with a $110 million funding round at a $1 billion project valuation. Now let us see if that elusive cohort of inchoate Web3 users agrees.

 

Contact ryan@architectpartners.com to schedule a meeting.