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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 May 22 – 28

Steve Payne
May 31, 2023
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27 Crypto Private Financings Raised ~$292M

Last week was again fairly active in crypto private financings, with 27 announced deals totalling $292M in disclosed capital raised.  As has been the trend for most of this year, our top ten list is again dominated by seed and Series A financings.

 

Long-time crypto investors Arrington, gumi crypto and Multicoin were all active last week, continuing to build via $2-3M seed rounds.  We’re interested to see more from gumi’s Openfort investment – Openfort talks about allowing developers to  “blend blockchain invisibly into the backbone of your games”, a requisite to overcoming friction.

 

The one exception to the early-stage trend is Worldcoin, with the largest raise at a $115M Series C.  Blockchain Capital led this round, with participation from a16z crypto, Bain Capital Crypto, and Distributed Global.  Worldcoin, led by Sam Altman, has now raised a total of $240M, including a $100M ICO in March 2022 led by a16z and Khosla Ventures.

 

Worldcoin, currently in beta, is aiming to evolve into the largest, most inclusive global identity and financial network.  Its wallet, World App, has about 2 million users across five continents, en route to a target billion users.  Central to Worldcoin’s privacy-centric positioning is The Orb, a biometric device that scans the retinas of users, so they can later confirm their identity online.  

 

There is certainly some controversy around Worldcoin.  Blockchain Capital partner and lead investor Spencer Bogart tweeted “Worldcoin is quite likely the single most misunderstood project in all of crypto (and that’s saying something). At first glance, it appears to be a noxious combination of hardware, biometrics, crypto and AI.  For good reason, folks get concerned and sensitive when it comes to biometrics— particularly so when you add a dose of crypto”.