Kevin Durant is reportedly about to make more money from a company most of us couldn’t explain if you put a gun to our heads than he’ll make hooping for the Rockets this season, and I’ve read the numbers four times looking for the catch.
Nvidia has reportedly agreed to buy the AI company Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, though the deal isn’t signed yet and could still collapse before it’s official. Durant and his longtime business partner Rich Kleiman made their Hugging Face investment early through their firm Thirty Five Ventures, a combined $250K spread across the seed round ($100K) and the Series A ($150K). That’s a rounding error for an NBA max guy. Chump change. The kind of number you’d expect to see next to “watch collection,” not “life-altering payday.”
Except Joe Pompliano reported the resulting stake is now worth $60 million or more, which he called one of the best athlete investments ever, and which is, by his own math, more than Durant will make playing basketball this year. Go ahead and do that arithmetic yourself. A quarter-million dollars turned into $60 million is roughly 240 times the original bet. I don’t understand what Hugging Face does at a level beyond “AI company that makes tools other AI companies use,” and neither, I’d guess, do most of the people reading this. Given the AI industry has had a rough go of building trust lately, you’d think a $12.9 billion price tag might raise some eyebrows. Doesn’t seem to matter here. The check clears the same either way.
Joe Pompliano posted the numbers himself, and it’s worth seeing the full breakdown in his own words:
https://twitter.com/JoePompliano/status/2093016643089887357
Durant, who’s already decided what his next chapter looks like on the court, just signed a two-year, $90 million extension with Houston, a deal that’s actually a discount off a full max contract, putting his salary for this coming season somewhere around $44 million. That’s serious money by any normal human standard. It’s also, per Pompliano’s reporting, less than what a five-figure tech investment from years ago just quietly generated while Durant was busy rehabbing, getting traded, and doing normal NBA-guy things.
That said, none of this is locked in yet. Nvidia previously offered $500 million for a stake that would’ve valued Hugging Face at $7 billion, and Hugging Face turned it down — so this company has shown it knows how to hold out for a bigger number, and a $12.9 billion deal that isn’t signed is still a deal that can un-happen. Durant doesn’t get to spend the $60 million until the ink actually dries.
I’ve spent years assuming the “athletes are secretly business geniuses” thing was mostly agency marketing, the same energy as some guy at the bar telling you about his crypto portfolio. This one’s different. A $250K side bet just out-earned an entire season of max-contract professional basketball, and Durant didn’t have to do anything but sign a check and wait. Meanwhile I’m out here trying to decide if I can afford the good mozzarella this week.
