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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 September 4 – September 10

Michael S. Klena
September 13, 2023
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26 Crypto Private Financings Raised ~$188M

26 Crypto Private Financings Raised ~$188M

Rolling 3-Month-Average: $141M

Rolling 52-Week Average: $211M

 

Segment Overview

Creeping up toward the averages in both amount raised and deal count.  Still running below but on the right path.

 

Selected Highlights 

Story Protocol raised $54MM in a Series A.  Led by a16z, they join a busy cap table of at least 16 investors.  Story Protocol focuses on intellectual property (IP) in the creative arts.  The protocol uses the blockchain for tracking and transparent provenance of artists work.  

 

Why Notable?  The largest raise for the week with $54MM from a new firm that had with $300K seed funding in May.  Larger, earlier raises are the exception these days, but have noted a few more in the past month. Additionally the investors are a mix of notable individuals and notable firms.

 

ZEEBU raised $25MM with Bankai Ventures leading the investment. ZEEBU has a very particular market, creating a loyalty token and a quasi stablecoin to be used between telecom carriers and the wholesale voice market.

 

Why Notable? Sector specific stablecoin is a novel use of the still relatively new stablecoin.  There has been numerous white papers touting a corporate coin for large firms to move funds internally, and this is the next step by enabling a select sector to use it between each other.  

 

Brine Fi raised $16.5MM at a post money valuation of $116.5MM.  Brine Fi is a zero knowledge proof decentralized exchange (DEX).   Pantera led the round, with at least six additional investors.

 

Why Notable? Notable for several things, starting with the valuation.  Overall trading volumes have cratered the past year, so a newly launched DEX attracting this valuation is a bit surprising.  I follow the exchange segment closely, and am of the view that consolidation is coming as we still have hundreds of exchanges chasing a fraction of the volume.

 

Patterns  

Trading and infrastructure remains the main segment.  Over the past few weeks we have been seeing more infrastructure for creatives (like this week’s Story Protocol) starting to expand the potential launched by NFT’s with the maturing of the offering.

 

Conferences  

We will be at Singapore Digital Asset Week + Token 2049 (Sept. 10-21); and Mainnet (Sept. 20-23).  If you will be there, let’s schedule time to connect.