Multicoin Capital's Kyle Samani Steps Down, Shifts Focus to AI and Longevity Tech

Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)

February 4th local time,Well-known industry venture capital firm Multicoin Capital wrote to LPs that co-founder and managing partner Kyle Samani has stepped down from his day-to-day responsibilities and management roles at Multicoin and has transitioned to a consultant role.

Another co-founder of Multicoin, Tushar Jain, said thatSamani's interests have expanded from the cryptocurrency field to cutting-edge areas such as AI, longevity technology, and robotics., therefore decided to invest more time in exploring these emerging technologies.

Since co-founding Multicoin with Tushar in 2017, Samani has always been one of the most active investors in the cryptocurrency field, with his most classic achievement being the bold bet on Solana.

Multicoin was one of the earliest venture capital firms to heavily invest in Solana, from 2018 to 2021,Multicoin led the first three rounds of financing for Solana, and Samani himself took on the role of preaching Solana to the crypto world.Samani is extremely skilled in promoting Solana in a high-profile and belittling manner. He once publicly criticized Bitcoin for lacking practical utility and criticized Ethereum for its bloated structure and slow scalability, emphasizing "Solana is always the answer," and firmly believes that SOL will outperform BTC and ETH in the long term.

The recent case is that yesterday, Vitalik publicly admitted that Ethereum's Layer2 historical roadmap was wrong. Samani specifically reposted an article he had written in 2021 comparing Ethereum's and Solana's scalability paths and commented, "This is the beginning and end of Ethereum's strategic failure."

Multicoin's bet on Solana has been a huge success. By the end of 2021,Samani is a guest The Wolf Of All Streets said during his podcast show that the institution has made an amazing profit of 614,000% on Solana.

However, as the entire Solana ecosystem suffered a major blow after the FTX collapse, SOL once dropped to $8, and the project fell into its darkest moment. Multicoin's profits were also significantly eroded—as the fund lost about 91.4% in 2022, its worst performance since its establishment.

But Samani and Multicoin demonstrated a more bold side at this time., not only did they not abandon Solana, but they continued to be driven by faith, firmly promoting Solana and increasing their investment in Solana ecosystem projects. The final result was that Solana successfully achieved the most astonishing rebirth in cryptocurrency history, and Samani and Multicoin also regained their lost ground with the recovery of SOL.

After the rise of the Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) in 2025, Multicoin, together with Galaxy Digital and Jump Crypto, led a $1.65 billion financing round for Forward Industries, the company behind DAT. Forward Industries is now the largest SOL DAT in the market (holding 6.82 million SOL, valued at approximately $626 million).Samani himself took on the role of chairman of the company's board.

Due to Samani's preference for contrarian investing and his overly loud and highly provocative remarks, he is always accompanied by a lot of controversy (mainly from the Ethereum ecosystem).

But in the eyes of a few VC peers, Samani is the best investor in the entire cryptocurrency field. Dragonfly Capital partner Hasseb Qureshi once said, as a competitor,Dragonfly and Multicoin are always at odds, but it's the experts who recognize each other. Investing is like a sport, and Samani is the highest scorer in history, unmatched by anyone.

Hasseb added, "This doesn't mean you have to like him. I often find him reckless, even annoying. I also often disagree with him... but Samani is a true contrarian thinker. He bets where others are unwilling to bet... at the end of the day, this is the reason investors exist—to allocate capital to underappreciated ideas, and Samani is one of the few non-consensus investors in our industry."

After the Multicoin LP letter was published, Samani himself explained his job change on X.

Samani emphasized that his belief in cryptocurrencies and Solana remains unchanged — "After nearly a decade of deep involvement in the cryptocurrency industry, I am more convinced than ever that crypto will fundamentally reshape the financial system. I believe the Clarity Act will attract a wave of new participants, giving rise to an unprecedented surge of applications.I still have a long-term positive outlook on the crypto space, especially the Solana ecosystem, and plan to continue making personal investments in this area while supporting companies in the Multicoin portfolio."Okay, I'm

In addition, although he will gradually exit Multicoin, Samani will continue to serve as chairman of the board of Forward Industries. In addition,Samani also mentioned a proposed request to redeem from the Multicoin main fund by March 31, 2026, but will not request cash redemption, instead conducting a physical redemption in the form of Forward Industries shares and warrants,To significantly increase individual exposure to Forward Industries.

Multicoin mentioned in a letter to LPs several new directions of interest to Samani — AI, longevity technology, and robotics.

Although it is temporarily unclear which directions Samani has already looked into (Samani said he will take a temporary break), yesterday he had shared an article on AI by another Multicoin partner, Shayon.Disrupt the relationship between humans and AIThe core argument of the article is that rather than pondering "what AI can assist humans with," a more economically beneficial direction is "how humans can assist AI," and around this shift in thinking, what new investment opportunities will emerge.

Interested readers may directly read the original text, or it can serve as a window into Samani's future thinking.