Kevin Durant Just Out-Earned Himself

Kevin Durant Just Out-Earned Himself

Kevin Durant and his business partner Rich Kleiman made two quiet bets on Hugging Face: $100,000 in the seed round, $150,000 in the Series A. Nvidia just acquired the company for $12.9 billion.

Durant likely cleared $60 million on those two checks. That is more money than he will make playing basketball this season.

This is the trade. Athletes have always had capital. The ones paying attention are figuring out where to put it, and the best investments are rarely the loudest ones. Durant did not need a fund, a press release, or a co-sign. He just needed the right room.

IN BRIEF

A Pro Basketball Player Just Invested in a Nuclear Reactor

Jeremy Jones plays professional basketball. He also just backed a company trying to make nuclear power plants small enough to fit on a truck.

Earlier this month, Apollo Atomics closed a $31 million seed round, $26 million in equity, $5 million in equipment financing, to build compact, factory-manufactured nuclear reactors that can be deployed anywhere. Jones, who manages capital through Fastbreak Fund, was in the round, as was Duke Capital Partners where I am a member.

America has a power problem. Artificial intelligence, the reshoring of manufacturing, the electrification of transportation, all of it requires electricity at a scale the current grid was never designed to handle. Demand is growing faster than it has in two decades. Utilities are scrambling. Data center operators are signing deals directly with power plants. The question of where the energy comes from is no longer an academic one. It is the central infrastructure question of this decade.

Small modular reactors are one answer. Unlike traditional nuclear plants, which take fifteen to twenty years and billions of dollars to build, SMRs are designed to be manufactured in a factory, shipped to a site, and assembled in months. They produce zero carbon emissions. They run continuously, unlike solar or wind. They can be placed near the facilities that need power most, data centers, military bases, industrial plants, rather than requiring new transmission lines across hundreds of miles.

NASCAR Is Racing on Military Bases — and That Is Not an Accident  NASCAR just announced it will race at Naval Base Coronado in 2027 and an undisclosed military installation in 2028, kicking off a multi-year partnership with the Department of Defense. Secretary Pete Hegseth called it "bigger than a single race", a deliberate, rolling celebration of military service built around one of America's most popular sports properties.

Former MLB Players Are Now Running Deal Flow for a VC Fun
BrknPar Venture Capital announced this month that former Major League Baseball players Jon Jay and Tyson Ross have joined the firm as Athlete Venture Partners, not as figureheads, but as active participants sourcing deals, evaluating investments, and supporting portfolio companies.

Baseball Brought 26 Hall of Famers Out of a Cornfield, and Netflix Showed It
The Field of Dreams game returned this August after a three-year hiatus, with the Phillies beating the Twins 7-1 in Dyersville, Iowa. The pregame ceremony brought 26 Hall of Famers walking out of the corn in right field, believed to be the largest gathering of Hall of Famers at a single game since 2008. Netflix carried the broadcast exclusively, a reminder that the most emotionally resonant moments in sports are now being used as streaming conversion tools.

Upcoming Travel

Sept 3-13: Juventus game with Giorgio Chiellini and an Italian roadtrip.

Sept 18-20: Duke Alumni Soccer weeekend and lunch with Duke engineering professor David Smith and his invisibility cloak:)

Oct 5-9: San Francisco Tech Week. Dinners with my partners at Icons.

Oct 26-30: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for the 10th annual FII.