Kevin Durant Investment Portfolio: 15 Biggest Companies
In this article we present the list of Kevin Durant Investment Portfolio: 15 Biggest Companies. Click to skip our detailed discussion of Kevin Durant’s background and investing history and go straight to Kevin Durant Investment Portfolio: 5 Biggest Companies.
NBA star Kevin Durant has built an impressive portfolio of accomplishments on the basketball court, winning the NBA Championship twice, being named NBA Finals MVP in both of those championship runs, and being a 13x NBA All-Star. He was also the second-overall pick in the 2007 NBA Draft, behind only Greg Oden (Portland surely wishes they could have a do-over on that pick).
Durant is now one of the highest-paid players in the NBA and has scored numerous lucrative endorsement deals with companies like Gatorade, Degree, and NIKE, Inc. (NYSE:NKE). Durant first partnered with Nike during his rookie season in 2007 and has since released 15 sets of shoes for the brand, with a 16th forthcoming.
Durant recently signed a lifetime endorsement deal with the footwear and apparel brand, joining Michael Jordan and Lebron James as the only NBA stars to have lifetime deals with NIKE, Inc. (NYSE:NKE).
Thanks to his salary and endorsements, Durant boasts a net worth estimated at over $200 million, making him one of the richest black Americans. For a look at some of the top investments and endorsements that other wealthy black Americans have, check out Michael Jordan, 10 Richest Black Americans and Their Stock Picks.
Kevin Durant Becomes a Venture Capital Superstar
Durant has since parlayed his prodigious basketball skills and the considerable wealth that he’s accumulated thanks to them into an equally impressive stock portfolio of investments. Durant founded Thirty Five Ventures (a reference to the number 35 he’s worn throughout much of his basketball career) in 2017 alongside his longtime manager and friend Rich Kleiman.
The firm has since invested in more than 100 early-stage companies, with a focus on investments in the sports, e-sports, technology, cannabis, and broadcasting spaces. The firm has achieved several notable successes with its investments.
Cybersecurity firm Confluera, which had raised $29 million in venture capital funding, was acquired by XM Cyber earlier this year. Prior to that, another Durant investment, Liftoff, merged with Blackstone-backed Vungle. The entity was rumored to be exploring an IPO in late 2021 that would value the company at $10 billion.
35V’s most noteworthy investment was in Coinbase Global, Inc. (NASDAQ:COIN), which went public in April 2021 at an $86 billion valuation following its first day of trading. COIN shares have since lost 83% of their value, sinking the company’s market valuation to just $13.6 billion.
Hedge funds have also been bailing on the company, with less than half as many funds long COIN on March 31 as there were at the end of 2021. Things aren’t looking up for Coinbase and other crypto companies in the near-term given the SEC’s crackdown on unregistered securities. For more information and a list of crypto stocks to steer clear of for now, check out 10 Crypto Stocks To Avoid During The SEC Crackdown.
Thirty Five Ventures currently has more than 50 investments in private companies in its stock portfolio, some of which could be poised for their own public debuts in the near future. Among its most prominent investments are Postmates (which was acquired by Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER) in 2020), Dapper Labs, Jeeves, and Thrive Global.
How Does a Stock Portfolio Work?
With the rise of low or no-cost investing apps like Robinhood, investing in stocks and building a portfolio of assets has become far more accessible to the average retail investor, which has many people wondering how to get started on their investing journey.
So before we delve into the biggest companies in Durant’s stock portfolio, let’s understand what is a stock portfolio in the first place. In simple terms, a stock portfolio is simply the collection of stocks that an investor owns.
Some investors may focus on specific types of portfolio themes, such as dividend stocks, technology stocks, or long-term growth stocks, but any collection of random stocks constitutes a stock portfolio. Too see what stocks AI would target for its own portfolio, check out ChatGPT Stock Portfolio: Top 10 Picks.
Certainly, the investing timeline or goals of the investor should factor into the construction of their portfolios. In that sense, what is a good portfolio for students, may not be a good portfolio for other investors. Given their long investing horizon, students can afford to invest in stable, less-risky assets, which will reliably compound their wealth in the decades to come.
Investors getting a later start when it comes to building their portfolios may instead need to add some higher-risk, higher-reward plays to attempt to quickly compound their wealth to set them up for retirement.
Now then, let’s see which companies Kevin Durant has invested in, several of which could eventually find their way onto the public markets and into retail investors’ portfolios as well.
Our Methodology
The following Kevin Durant Investment Portfolio stocks are ranked based on the total amount of capital they’ve raised to date. These companies don’t necessarily have the 15 highest valuations among Durant’s investments, as other companies could’ve raised less money but at a higher valuation.
However, the fact that investors have been willing to pour more of their money into these companies than any others speaks volumes about the conviction they have in them and their expected return on investment.
Kevin Durant Investment Portfolio: 15 Biggest Companies
15. Alt
Total Raised: $110 million
Could Alt be Durant's next big investment that gets bought by a company like Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:UBER) or goes public like Coinbase Global, Inc. (NASDAQ:COIN)? The company operates a mobile platform for buying and selling sports cards, complete with real-time pricing data. The platform even allows users to take out loans against the value of their card collections. Alt raised $31 million in March 2021, followed by an additional $75 million raise in November of that year, at a valuation of about $325 million.
In addition to Durant, several other notable sports stars have invested in the company, including NFL players Tom Brady and Marlon Humphrey, basketball star Giannis Antetokounmpo, and female sports stars Alex Morgan and Candace Parker.
14. Overtime
Total Raised: $120 million
Sports social media startup Overtime has raised more than $100 million in funding from big names like Durant, Jeff Bezos, and Drake, with the company reportedly being valued at more than $500 million. In addition to Durant, Overtime claims as many as 6% of all NBA players have invested in the company, including Carmelo Anthony, Pau Gasol, and Trae Young.
Overtime operates a popular social media platform that showcases short form video content of high school athletes, primarily basketball players, in turn providing some of them with guaranteed salaries of up to $100,000.
T-12. Hugging Face
Total Raised: $160 million
Hugging Face topped a $2 billion valuation in early 2022 after raising another $100 million in funding. Philippe Laffont’s Coatue Management took part in that round for the first time, while Durant, who was already an investor, took part again.
Hugging Face operates a machine learning platform that hosts thousands of different pre-tested machine learning and natural language processing models. The platform allows users to upload their own models, interact with other users, and test and expand on existing models in what’s been dubbed the Github of machine learning.
T-12. Thrive Global
Total Raised: $160 million
Thrive Global, which was founded by Arianna Huffington, raised another $80 million in Series C funding in July 2021. The company gained prominence during the pandemic given that several of its themes were put on full public display, including employee stress and mental well-being.
Thrive Global has worked with hundreds of companies to help their employees build better habits that improve their productivity, resilience, and work/life balance. The company has been using AI and machine learning to help develop more efficient models of habit formation building.
11. Mercury
Total Raised: $163 million
Mercury, a fintech software and banking service provider aimed at startups, raised $20 million in Series A funding back in September 2019, with Durant, Andreessen Horowitz, and Will Smith’s Dreamers Fund among the prominent investors. It followed that up with another $120 million Series B round in July 2021 that valued the company at $1.62 billion. Mercury has more than 100,000 customers in 180 countries.
10. Lively
Total Raised: $200 million
Health savings account provider Lively raised another $80 million in October 2021 to help fund its expansion. The company offers free, FDIC-insured HSAs to individuals and families, as well as thousands of investment options through Charles Schwab, including guided portfolios.
T-8. Jeeves
Total Raised: $270 million
Fintech startup Jeeves raised $180 million in Series C funding in March 2022, at a valuation of $2.1 billion, more than 4x greater than its previous valuation. Like Mercury, Jeeves is a startup-focused fintech that provides a cross-border corporate card and expense platform that significantly streamlines the operations of startups operating in multiple countries. In addition to Durant, Andre Iguodala and Odell Beckham Jr. are some of the other investors in Jeeves.
T-8. Imperfect Foods
Total Raised: $270 million
Food rescue and delivery platform Imperfect Foods had raised $270 million in funding at a valuation of $700 million through early 2022. The company was acquired later that year by Misfits Market, with the combined entity expected to approach $1 billion in sales by next year, in addition to achieving profitability.
7. Ethos
Total Raised: $420 million
Ethos last raised money in 2021 at a valuation of over $2.7 billion. The life insurance provider was on track to issue $20 billion in coverage that year and had grown revenue and customer count by 500% year-over-year. Will Smith, Robert Downey Jr., and Jay-Z’s Roc Nation were among Ethos’ other investors.
6. Acorns
Total Raised: $507 million
Acorns scrapped plans to go public through an SPAC in 2022 and instead raised another $300 million in private funding, its first capital raise in three years. The latest raise valued at the company at close to $2 billion, more than double its $860 million valuation in 2019. Acorns now plans to pursue a more traditional IPO. The fintech startup had more than 4.6 million paid subscribers as of early 2022.
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Disclosure: None. Kevin Durant Investment Portfolio: 15 Biggest Companies is originally published at Insider Monkey.
