Kevin Durant has made more than $500 million playing in the NBA. Now, one of his earliest bets on artificial intelligence could deliver a fortune of its own.
Betting on AI
Durant and longtime business partner Rich Kleiman invested a combined $250,000 in Hugging Face, an computation tools company, during the company’s early funding rounds, according to Front Office Sports. The investment was made through Thirty Five Ventures, the investment and media company Durant and Kleiman founded.
Now, that relatively small investment could be worth more than $60 million.
Nvidia has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, according to a report from The Information. The deal would give Nvidia control of one of the leading platforms for open-source artificial intelligence models, datasets and development tools.
Neither Nvidia nor Hugging Face had publicly confirmed the transaction when it was reported.
The estimated value of Durant’s stake comes from investor and entrepreneur Joe Pompliano, who said on X that Durant invested $100,000 in Hugging Face’s seed round and another $150,000 in its Series A round. Based on the reported $12.9 billion acquisition price, Pompliano estimated that Durant’s investment could be worth more than $60 million.
If that estimate holds, Durant would have turned a $250,000 investment into a return of more than 240 times his original stake.
The investment also puts the scale of Durant’s NBA earnings into perspective. He is in the second year of a two-year, $90 million contract with the Houston Rockets. The original $250,000 investment amounted to just over two days of his NBA salary, according to Front Office Sports as cited by The Spun.
Hugging Face has grown considerably since those early investment rounds. Founded in 2016, the company became a major hub for developers and researchers working with open-source artificial intelligence models and datasets. Its platform now hosts millions of models, datasets and applications used throughout the AI ecosystem.
Nvidia‘s reported acquisition would mark a major expansion of the chipmaker’s position in artificial intelligence. Nvidia already dominates the market for AI accelerators, while Hugging Face occupies a different part of the technology stack by providing a platform where developers can discover, share and work with AI models.
For Durant, the potential windfall is the latest example of the business strategy he has pursued alongside Kleiman.
Through Thirty Five Ventures, Durant has invested in a wide range of technology, consumer and financial companies. Its portfolio has included Coinbase, Postmates, Acorns, Robinhood, DraftKings and Whoop, among others.
That portfolio has helped establish Durant as one of the more active athlete investors in the startup world. His interest in technology and entrepreneurship has also allowed him to build a financial portfolio that extends well beyond his basketball earnings.
The Hugging Face investment, however, could stand out even among those bets.
A $250,000 investment becoming worth more than $60 million would represent a return of roughly 24,000%, assuming the acquisition closes at the reported price and the estimates of Durant’s stake are accurate.
It is also a reminder of the potential, and risk, of investing in startups at an early stage. Durant’s investment came years before Hugging Face emerged as a major player in the artificial intelligence industry, when its eventual value was far from certain.
The reported transaction would give Durant another potentially lucrative exit from an investment made well before a company became a household name.
For an NBA star who has spent nearly two decades building wealth on the court, one of his most remarkable paydays could ultimately come from a bet he made off it.
