Kevin Durant's $250,000 stake in Hugging Face may top $60 million

Business Sep 27, 2026

NBA star Kevin Durant is about to score big off the court; his early $250,000 investment in AI startup Hugging Face might soon be worth more than $60 million.

Thanks to NVIDIA's plan to buy Hugging Face for around $12.93 billion, Durant's bet on tech is turning into a massive win.

Kevin Durant backed Hugging Face early

Durant invested in Hugging Face back in 2018 and 2019, when the company was just starting out as a chatbot project.

Since then, Hugging Face has grown into a major open-source AI platform and raised huge funding rounds, including a $2 billion valuation by 2022.

Now, with NVIDIA stepping in, Durant's early move shows how athletes are getting smart about tech (and sometimes hitting the jackpot).