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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 November 11 – November 17

Todd White
November 20, 2024
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November 11 – November 17 (Published November 20th)

 

PERSPECTIVES by Todd White

 

40 Crypto Private Financings Raised: $194M

Rolling 3-Month-Average: $220M

Rolling 52-Week Average: $220M

 

 

Zero Gravity Labs (0GL), a team developing a decentralized AI operating system, closed a solid $40 million seed round last week, coupled with a $250 million token purchase commitment for digital asset liquidity. The team envisions their operating system providing blockchain-based infrastructure for decentralized AI applications.

 

 

To many, AI and crypto seem to be natural, perhaps even mutually dependent, bedfellows. AI may need blockchain to authenticate outputs and ensure data integrity, provide transparency and security, assure the provenance of both content and creations, protect against (or at least identify) deep fakes, and efficiently manage the massive amounts of data processing that AI engines require.

 

 

Crypto can also benefit from AI’s ability to process vast amounts of data, automate complex processes, and augment human developers’ ability to conceive and develop new tools. Numerous use cases are emerging, such as enhanced data training and zero-knowledge machine learning. More fundamentally, AI “agents” may emerge to become dominant users of on-chain and cross-chain tools, with a unique ability to quickly learn their way around a notoriously clunky crypto user experience.

 

 

Integrating this mutual dependence into a platform for mutual growth could prove synergistic. 0GL’s dAIOS (decentralized AI operating system) will deploy a modular and layered approach to reduce costs and complexity in processing vast amounts of data and managing computational complexity, while keeping datasets decentralized. The current financing round follows their $35 million pre-seed announced in March. These are big numbers for early rounds, reflecting both the cost of developing first-of-a-kind technology and some leading investors’ willingness to fund the burn.

 

 

The convergence of AI and blockchain seems well underway, with competitors such as EigenLayer and Celestia also gaining momentum this year. Time will tell how truly complementary the match between AI and crypto will be, yet the robust investor support for 0GL and others suggests that crypto-AI infrastructure is in vogue with investors.

 

 

Contact ryan@architectpartners.com to schedule a meeting.