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.

Crypto M&A Snapshot

Week of March 4 – March 10

Steve Payne
March 10, 2024
DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT

For the fourth week in a row, we’re tracking four announced M&A transactions in the crypto/digital assets space.

 

Infinity Capital, a cybersecurity and blockchain firm reportedly based in Dubai, announced in Forbes it had acquired Andro, a Medellín-based company specializing in blockchain infrastructure for consideration “in excess of seven figures”.  Little is known about Infinity, but Andro is an early stage startup offering beta-stage stablecoin protection infrastructure which balances users’ portfolios and sells if a coin depegs.  

 

CryptoBlox Technologies Inc., a smallcap (CSE: BLOX) Vancouver-based company, announced the acquisition of Blockchain Fintech Unipessoal LDA (“Blockchain Fintech”), a Portugal-based blockchain-based financial developer, for CryptoBlox shares worth up to $11M in initial consideration and earnouts.  Blockchain Fintech is pre-revenue, and CryptoBlox has a market cap of $34M CAD, down from $600M in 2021.  Last year CryptoBlox announced the acquisition of Red Water Acquisition Corp, an Alberta crypto mining project in development, also for $11M CAD including earnouts.

 

Dutch crypto trading platform Coinmerce entered into a joint venture with the crypto fund Icoinic. Coinmerce will have a majority stake. Coinmerce is a straightforward trading platform registered with the Dutch central bank (plus French and Spanish registrations in 2023) that supports 300+ coins.  When Binance and BUX exited the Netherlands market last year, users were directed to transfer their accounts to Coinmerce.  Icoinic is an Amsterdam-based hedge fund focused on alternative strategies in digital assets. With this merger, Coinmerce announced its aims to provide an alternative to the Bitcoin ETF.

 

Finally this week, The9 Limited (NASDAQ: NCTY), a Shanghai-based Internet company, has agreed to acquire 51% of Shenma Limited for $1 million in cash and The9 stock valued at $14.3 million based on achieving certain milestones and an IPO.  We wrote about The9 years ago when they had the exclusive license to operate and distribute World of Warcraft in China – at that point, The9 had a market cap of over $20 billion.  Since the WoW license was given to NetEase, The9 has diversified into online gaming and crypto, with recent forays in crypto mining in the U.S., Canada and Kyrgyzstan. Shenma, an AI-generated content (AIGC) driven digital human SaaS platform, represents yet another pivot.  The9’s current market cap is $25 million.

 

Events

Architect Partners will be at Digital Asset Summit London (3/18 – 3/20) and the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco (3/18-3/22). Please contact elliot@architectpartners.com or arjun@architectpartners.com to meet.