Houston Rockets star Kevin Durant has a wide range of investments in emerging sports leagues and media, but he was notably ahead of the curve with a fitness tracker called Whoop.
Whoop is a wristband that gives its users a comprehensive view of their health by monitoring sleep, strain, stress, and heart health around the clock. The tracker comes with its own app that helps users make healthier choices to improve performance and achieve their fitness goals.
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According to Sportico, Whoop has raised $575 million in Series G funding, bringing the company’s valuation to $10.1 billion. This latest round of funding included investments from athletes such as Cristiano Ronaldo, LeBron James, and Rory McIlroy. Notably, Kevin Durant invested in Whoop back in 2017, when the company’s valuation was just $125 million. This means that the current valuation has increased by 81 times compared to nearly ten years ago.
In 2020, Durant increased his investment during the Series E funding round when the company was valued at $1.2 billion. By 2021, the company’s valuation rose to $3.6 billion. Reports indicate that Durant has not sold any of his shares in the company, and he has not disclosed how much he has invested.
This isn’t the first time Durant has gotten ahead in the investment world. He was an early investor in Coinbase, a platform for buying and selling bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, back in 2014.
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“I was always into futuristic, new technology coming and how world can change,” Durant said during CNBC Sport x Boardroom Summit last year. “And I felt like that was something that could be consistent and can last. And I mean, here we are now, 10 years later, we’re still talking about it.”
Sportico already ranks Durant as the 14th-highest-paid athlete on its Top 100 list at $100.8 million, which covers salary and endorsements but excludes his investments through Thirty Five Ventures. His investment portfolio includes his self-founded media brand Boardroom, Major League Pickleball, Athletes Unlimited, LOVB volleyball, as well as men’s and women’s pro soccer teams such as the Philadelphia Union and NY/NJ Gotham FC.
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This article originally published at Kevin Durant sat on this startup for years, now it’s worth $10 billion.
