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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 23 – October 29

J. Todd White
November 1, 2023
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20 Crypto Private Financings Raised ~$82M

Rolling 3-Month-Average: $123M

Rolling 52-Week Average: $182M

 

Smaller and earlier-stage venture investments again dominated this week’s private investment landscape, with a slight deal count uptick to 20 financings, but proceeds remaining modest. Infrastructure remains the dominant theme, and the top ten included four trading infrastructure deals, two payment companies, two privacy-related initiatives and a med-tech platform for which privacy is an essential tenet.   

 

Selected Highlights 

Rymedi, a South Carolina-based med-tech team, closed a $9M Series A co-led by RW3 Ventures and White Star Capital with participation from Blockchange Ventures, Avalanche’s Blizzard Fund, and strategic healthcare industry angels. Rymedi was founded in 2017 with early participation in an FDA-approved consortium to explore blockchain-enabled tracking and verification in drug transport and usage. Other early collaborations included using their global pharmaceutical compliance expertise to help the cannabinoid industry meet international regulatory needs, focused work with the WHO to address hepatitis C in Mongolia, and a recurring symbiotic affiliation with neighboring Clemson University. At the height of COVID, Rymedi was able to quickly deploy its digital workflow platform in testing and treatment initiatives. And immediately prior to their latest round, Rymedi migrated to Avalanche, using three avalanche sub-nets to separately solve for identity (privacy), transaction and compliance monitoring.

 

Why Notable?   

The Rymedi story has combined deep industry compliance expertise with blockchain technology to solve notoriously tricky and competing mandates in healthcare – the transfer of health records, and automate patient testing, treatment, and monitoring to optimize outcomes with greater speed and reduced cost, while preserving security and privacy of patient data. What has emerged is a nimble and scalable enterprise platform with numerous real-world healthcare applications, from drug tracing and tracking to testing and treatment of infectious diseases, that now serves 1M+ patients in 1200 locations across US, Africa and Australia.

 

Nocturn Labs, the developer of an Ethereum-based privacy protocol, raised $6M in seed funding led by Bain Capital Crypto and Polychain Capital, with notable support including the Ethereum ecosystem and co-founder Vitalik Buterin, and Bankless Ventures.  The protocol is expected to launch in late November using zero-knowledge proofs and stealth addresses to facilitate private account activity on a public blockchain.  

 

Why Notable?  

There has been significant recent traction of institutional initiatives using private permissioned blockchains,  particularly within the traditional finance world where privacy, security and control are paramount.  Preserving privacy on public blockchains is oft-cited as a barrier to mass adoption or migration onto public chains, which many feel offers more complete and scalable benefits.  Over time there may be diminishing distinctions as cross-chain solutions and interoperability become more refined over time.  Solving for privacy is a critical component in the evolution.