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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.

Snapshots

Week of March 13 – March 19

Steve Payne
March 22, 2023
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17 financings raised ~$54M

 

Last week was one of the quietest since Architect started reporting on weekly private financings in the crypto space.  Perhaps this is not surprising, given the turmoil in tech banking and crypto banking.  But remember that these deals originated months ago, as announcements typically lag investment, so we’re likely to see the banking mess affect the next few months.  

 

Stepping back, we looked at our report from six months ago.  For the snapshot dated September 21, 2022, some 40 financings raised $661M – over 10x compared to last week.  That long-ago week had four deals in investing/trading infrastructure – this week has only one.  Not shocking with BTC dipping below $20,000 and exchange volumes down by 70-80 percent.  And the September 2022 week led with LootMogul raising $200M – compared to the largest round last week at $15M.

 

It’s not just the crypto sector – in the broader tech sector, many of the crossover investors that bid up late-stage valuations last year have gone quiet.  And Series A raises are back in the $2.5M-$10M range of a few years ago.  What’s to like about this?  We are heartened that early-stage is still relatively active, even though valuations are down.  This shows that builders are still building.

 

We are also heartened at where the investment is going.  One week does not establish truth, but the ten deals shown to the right reflect a (healthy) shift towards developer tools and the other functions required to build and deploy applications.  Entrepreneurs and investors appear to be looking beyond the early, more speculative use cases.

 

Looking at the Game category, Jungle of Brazil has raised $6 million for its Web3 mobile shooter.  “We are committed to creating fun-first hybrid games that are mobile-first and blockchain-enabled,” said Jungle CEO Joao Beraldo.  Architect is at the Game Developer Conference 2023 in San Francisco this week, and this is not the kind of headline we saw a year ago.  In private conversations with developers a year ago, the gaming community was unhappy with the hype garnered by early play-to-earn models like Axie Infinity, and hoping to see more games take Beraldo’s “fun-first” approach.  We are looking forward to seeing new product launches this week, and will likely have new financings to report for game companies next week.

 

Finally, a quick quiz for our loyal readers.  We have been calling this weekly report the Crypto Private Financings Snapshot.  In 2023, does this still hold?  Do you prefer crypto, digital assets, blockchain, or another label entirely?  Please send your thoughts to arjun@architectpartners.com.