Key points
- Nvidia is reportedly buying Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, and Kevin Durant's $250,000 early stake may be worth more than $60 million.
- His 2017 Whoop investment is up 81x on paper after the company's $10.1 billion round in March.
- His firm bought into Coinbase (COIN) at a $1.6 billion valuation in 2017. It trades near $48 billion today.
The Information reported Wednesday that Nvidia (NVDA) has agreed to pay $12.9 billion for Hugging Face, the main hub where developers share open-source AI models. Nvidia has not confirmed it.
NBA star Kevin Durant and his business partner Rich Kleiman backed Hugging Face early through their firm Thirty Five Ventures. Joe Pompliano, who writes the sports business newsletter Huddle Up, wrote on X that the pair invested in the seed and Series A rounds, and that he was told that Durant put "$100,000 in the seed round and $150,000 in the Series A." His estimate is that the stake is now worth more than $60 million. That works out to about 240 times his money.
The company those checks funded was not even the same business. In 2018, Hugging Face was a chatbot app aimed at teenagers. It raised a $4 million seed round that May and a $15 million Series A in December 2019 led by Lux Capital, then pivoted into the open-source model hub Nvidia is now paying for. Nvidia has been on the cap table since a 2023 round at a $4.5 billion valuation, and in January the Financial Times reported that Hugging Face had said no to a $500 million check from Nvidia in late 2025, an offer that valued it near $7 billion.
Where the rest of his portfolio stands
The Hugging Face windfall is not a one-off.
| Company | Valuation when Durant got in | Today |
|---|---|---|
| Whoop | $125 million (2017) | $10.1 billion round in March |
| Coinbase (COIN) | $1.6 billion (2017) | About $48 billion market cap |
| Robinhood (HOOD) | $1.2 billion (2017) | About $96 billion market cap |
| Mercury | Series A (2019) | $5.2 billion round in May |
| Rubrik (RBRK) | Early round | About $20 billion market cap |
| Overtime | $9.5 million round (2018) | $500 million round in 2022 |
| Postmates | 2016 | Sold to Uber (UBER) for $2.65 billion in 2020 |
Let's start with Coinbase (COIN). Thirty Five Ventures joined the Series D in 2017, a $100 million round at a $1.6 billion valuation, Sportico reported. The stock has been a rougher ride than the entry math suggests. Shares traded near $185 on Friday, a market cap of about $48 billion, down 54% from the $402 high they hit last October. Even so, the company is worth about thirty times what it was when Durant got in.
Robinhood (HOOD) worked out better. The firm bought in back in 2017, when the broker was valued at $1.2 billion, per Sportico, and today it trades near a $96 billion market cap, an 80x move that beats every public name on this list. The company opened its second venture fund to retail investors this month. Rubrik (RBRK) is the quiet one. The data security company rarely comes up in coverage of Durant's portfolio, but the stock hit a 52-week high on Thursday and is worth about $20 billion.
Mercury has kept climbing since Durant's Series A check in late 2019; the banking startup raised $200 million in May at a $5.2 billion valuation. Overtime is the one that went sideways. Durant backed the sports media company in 2018 in a $9.5 million round that also included Andreessen Horowitz, and its last big raise, $100 million led by Liberty Media in August 2022, valued it around $500 million. Growing, but nothing like the rest of the list.
One caution on the math. Comparing entry valuations with today's numbers flatters every early investor, because a seed-stage stake gets diluted each time the company sells new shares, and these companies have all sold a lot of them. The real multiple always runs below the headline one. Whoop is the clearest case for patience anyway. Sportico reported that Durant has not sold a single share, that he added to the position in 2020 at a $1.2 billion valuation, and that his first check went in three years before that, when a Series C valued the wearables maker at just $125 million. Nine years of holding, no exits, and it is now his biggest paper win among the names still private.
The other athletes writing checks
Durant is not the only athlete doing this. Andre Iguodala was in Zoom (ZM) and PagerDuty (PD) before both went public in 2019, and he has backed more than 40 companies over the years. Serena Williams runs her own fund, Serena Ventures, which has put money into more than 30 startups, Impossible Foods among them, and Stephen Curry started Penny Jar Capital with two of his college teammates from Davidson.
The newer athlete money is coming in much later, though. Whoop's March round included Cristiano Ronaldo, LeBron James, Rory McIlroy, and Reggie Miller, according to the company, all of them buying in at the $10.1 billion valuation. Durant paid the $125 million price nine years before they did. For the new group to make ten times their money, Whoop would have to be worth more than $100 billion.
Will Ahmed, Whoop's founder and CEO, told Yahoo Finance in March: "It's our expectation this is the last private round of financing that we'll do. Our next step is an IPO."
Live market data via Robinhood, August 28, 2026. This article is for information only and is not investment advice.
