Kevin Durant Could Earn Massive Payout from Early Hugging Face Investment After Reported $12.9B Sale

Kevin Durant is one of the greatest basketball players in history and, apparently, a fairly shrewd investor as well.

Insider Joe Pompliano reported Thursday that Durant and his business partner, Rich Kleiman, invested $100,000 in the seed round and $150,000 in the Series A round of fundraising for the company Hugging Face.

That is notable as Nvidia has reportedly acquired Hugging Face for $12.9 billion.

"He likely made more than $60 million in this investment alone," Pompliano wrote. "That is one of the best athlete investments ever."

The total payout is not confirmed since Durant's share of the company is not public, but the NBA star will clearly benefit from getting in early on a rising company.

Durant posted about his investment on social media in 2017:

April Roach and Kai Nicol-Schwarz of CNBC reported on the acquisition Thursday and noted "if completed, the acquisition would put one of the most widely used platforms for sharing and working with open-source AI models under Nvidia's ownership, expanding the chipmaker's reach further into the software and model ecosystem."

As for Durant, he is set to make $43.9 million this season for the Houston Rockets before a 2027-28 player option of $46.1 million, per Spotrac .

He has also earned $501.1 million in career earnings during his NBA tenure.

It's safe to say Durant, who will turn 38 years old next month, is set up well for retirement thanks to his basketball earnings and investment.

That is notable since he revealed during an episode of Boardroom Talks (11:40 mark) retirement is on his mind after former teammate Russell Westbrook called it a career.

"I'm on deck," he said . "… It's a young man's game. Even though I still feel like I can play, I always hear, 'you're 38, you're 39. You're getting up there.' I get that. But I put everything into the game, and I'm cool with whatever happens moving forward. I'm going to continue putting everything into the game until I can't."

When retirement does come, perhaps he can look further into investments like the one he made with Hugging Face.