David Swain has joined Paradigm, a crypto venture capital giant, as its chief marketing officer.
Swain, who previously served as head of global communications at Instagram and senior director of technology communications at Facebook in his career, moved to Paradigm last month, according to his LinkedIn profile. Most recently, Swain was vice president of global partnerships at Strava, a social fitness app and community boasting over 120 million members.
Swain's appointment comes shortly after Paradigm raised $850 million for its third fund in June. This fund aims to invest in early-stage crypto projects. It follows Paradigm's $2.5 billion fund raised in 2021, the largest crypto investment vehicle at that time.
Swain's move to Paradigm is intriguing, especially given his apparent lack of a crypto background. However, Paradigm has shown interest in investing not only in crypto but also in frontier technologies like artificial intelligence.
Last year, The Block reported Paradigm had removed references to crypto and web3 from its website and rebranded as a "research-driven technology investment firm." Huang later described this change as "kind of ridiculous" and emphasized that the firm's commitment to crypto has never been stronger, while also noting that developments in artificial intelligence are "too interesting to ignore."
This year, Paradigm has backed more than 10 crypto startups, leading and joining big funding rounds for several projects. These include leading a $225 million Series A round for the Layer 1 blockchain developer Monad, a $150 million Series A for the decentralized social networking protocol Farcaster, a $70 million funding round for the Bitcoin staking protocol Babylon, and a $55 million Series A round for zero-knowledge proofs startup Succinct Labs.
San Francisco-based Paradigm invests in startups ranging from $1 million to over $100 million and reportedly manages over $10 billion in assets. Founded in 2018 by Huang and Fred Ehrsam, a Coinbase co-founder, Paradigm remains a major player in the crypto investment space. Ehrsam stepped back from a leadership role last October.
It's unclear whether the CMO position at Paradigm is newly introduced or if Swain is replacing someone, though it appears to be the former. Details about Paradigm's specific plans for the role are also unclear. The firm did not respond to The Block's requests for comment by the time of publication.
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