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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

Elizabeth Menke
March 19, 2023
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In contrast to a very slow previous week, there were six deals announced this week. This appears to be yet another data point indicating that there is simply no discernable pattern in M&A activity at the moment. One week is quiet, the next busy, and so on. The majority of the deals are relatively small with very little transparency around pricing and valuation in general. The deals this week, as in past weeks, have represented a variety of areas within crypto, including NFTs, financial services, Web3 marketing, and infrastructure.

 

The two NFT deals were Limit Break’s acquisition of FreeNFT and Metaverse’s purchase of Maharlika Culture & Art Domain. Limit Break is a blockchain-based gaming company with free-to-own online gaming. Target FreeNFT gives away NFTs to collectors. In the second NFT-related deal, acquirer Metaverse Inc. is a provider of product development and digital marketing services and target Maharlika is a Chinese-based, art asset management firm that uses NFTs to trade art collections.

 

In the first of two financial services deals, Daishin Securities acquired Kasa Korea, a real estate securities trading platform built on DLT. In the second deal, payments platform startup Qori acquired Synalcom, a Payments service provider offering an electronic payment terminal with crypto payments enabled, to form Sylq. Sylq is an all-in-one PSP/Payments Gateway that also has crypto payments.

 

In a small Web3 marketing deal, Coinsilium Group acquired Tokenomi, a firm offering strategic advisory, token model construction, and advice on Web3 marketing. Finally, in the infrastructure deal this week, Businessplug acquired SUBX, a platform offering the ability to build and develop blockchain applications on a no-code basis.