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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.

Insights

Week of October 16 – October 22

J. Todd White
October 25, 2023
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17 Crypto Private Financings Raised ~$91M

Rolling 3-Month-Average: $123M

Rolling 52-Week Average: $182M

 

 

This week saw the transaction count remaining steady at 17 for the third week running, although with notably lower proceeds.  DApps dominated the top ten board.

 

 

Selected Highlights 

 

 

Globacap, a London-based technology firm focused on private capital markets, completed a $21M Series B financing to ramp marketing, sales, and facilitate geographic expansion. According to co-founder Mules Milston, Globacap is “bringing public markets-like infrastructure to private capital markets to improve access, boost liquidity and remove administrative burdens”. Globacap develops SaaS and white-label solutions for financial institutions – including securities exchanges, banks and asset managers. They seek to reduce costs and improve efficiency through digitized workflow automation for the issuance, administration, transfer and settlement of private capital markets transactions.  

 

 

Why Notable?   

With AUM at $11.7 trillion for 2023 and 20% annual growth despite largely opaque, manual and laborious transaction and admin processes, private capital markets represent a substantial opportunity for automation and digitization. The latest round from credible institutional investors including Cboe Global Markets and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, suggests a strong market validation for Globacap’s approach.

 

 

SynFutures, announced a $22M raise intended to expand engineering and biz dev functions. Concurrently, the Singapore-based decentralized crypto derivatives platform launched its Oyster automated market maker, and hopes that enhanced efficiency and liquidity through Oyster will help address the gap in decentralized exchange derivatives trading volume, which dwarfs spot trading on centralized exchanges but has lagged in DeFi markets. SynFutures is among the largest markets on the Polygon layer-2, with a modest TVL of $6M.  

 

 

Why Notable?  

The round was led by Pantera Capital, with heavyweights Susquehanna International Group and HashKey also joining the round.  It is notable not only for its impressive investor mix, but also as a more traditional financing for a DeFi platform.  While the valuation and structure of this round were not disclosed, CEO Rachel Lin expressed willingness to consider a native token launch down the road, subject to market conditions and the evolving regulatory landscape.

 

 

Crypto data firm Coin Metrics raised $6.7M in a private placement from a new undisclosed investor with a mix of equity, options and “other securities” according to their Form D SEC filing. Coin Metrics provides crypto market, network and price data, and boasts a highly credible suite on its existing cap table with an array of both crypto and traditional institutional investors. The new funds will be used to improve financial intelligence, data authentication and analytics.

  

 

Why Notable?

Coin Metrics is emerging as a go-to resource for institutional interest in crypto markets, and has repeatedly received broad investor support.  Its 2022 $35m Series C round – led by BNY Mellon and Acrew Capital, with support from Goldman Sachs, Brevan Howard, and Cboe Digital Markets – followed a successful $15M Series B in 2021 included Goldman Sach and Fidelity, and $6M Series A in 2020, led by Highland Capital Partners, with notable Web3 investors Digital Currency Group, Avon Ventures, Raptor Group, Castle Island Ventures, and Coinbase Ventures.  Apparently, this recent smaller private placement was facilitated to bring an undisclosed investor into these impressive ranks.