NFL star Saquon Barkley has reportedly invested millions in tech startups and VC funds—from an AI giant to Elon Musk's Neuralink
Saquon Barkley has earned nearly $80 million in NFL salary and bonuses since 2018.
Instead of spending that money lavishly, the Philadelphia Eagles running back has invested millions of it in a variety of venture funds and tech startups, according to a report published by The Profile on September 3.
Those funds and startups reportedly include artificial intelligence firm Anthropic, Elon Musk-owned neurotech company Neuralink, prediction market Polymarket and venture capital fund Founders Fund, which is run by billionaire investor and political activist Peter Thiel.
"I was just thinking about how I can only play for so long, so I really gotta take advantage, keep investing, and create wealth for me and my family," Barkley told The Profile.
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After Barkley became the No. 2 pick in the 2018 NFL draft, he signed a $31.2 million contract — and, wary of overspending and watching his sudden fortune quickly vanish, vowed to invest while living off his endorsement deals instead.
"When I declared for the NFL draft and kind of realized where I was going to be drafted, that was something I was like, 'You know what? Kind of want to follow the Marshawn Lynch method. I don't want to touch that. I want to invest it, put it in the right peoples' hands and learn as I continue to make investments. And just live off the endorsement deals,'" Barkley told ESPN in June 2018.
Barkley has endorsement deals with brands including Nike, Pepsi and Toyota. He earns an estimated $10 million per year from endorsements, sports marketing analyst Bob Dorfman told Front Office Sports in January.
The NFL star initially parked much of his rookie contract in traditional long-term investments like S&P 500 index funds, The Profile reported. He's also put some of his earnings into real estate, including his recent purchase of a $3.9 million home in Malvern, Pennsylvania.
More recently, he's embraced some risk — investing in mobile payments app Strike in 2021, and announcing plans to convert all his marketing and endorsement earnings to bitcoin using the app, for example. Since then, the price of bitcoin has more than tripled, "turning a $10 million income stream into a $35 million asset," The Profile noted.
More broadly, startup investing can be a risky approach to money management: Young companies, even trendy ones with lofty valuations, are never guaranteed to succeed. Barkley has funded more than 10 startups, usually at between $250,000 and $500,000 per startup, The Profile reported — likely only constituting a fraction of his career earnings, so far.
His shift into startup investing began after he read Thiel's book "Zero to One," and he identifies his targets through word-of-mouth referrals from his business manager Ken Katz's investor network, according to The Profile. Barkley interrogates a company's founder or founders directly before choosing to invest, he told the publication.
"It's about asking them what they stand for, what their mission is, why they think they'll be successful," said Barkley. "They have to be confident, but arrogance is a turn-off."
Barkley, 28, kicked off his 8th NFL season — more than double the length of the average NFL player's career — on September 4. He received some extra motivation to grow his wealth as much as possible during his playing career from a severe injury in 2020, when a torn ACL cause him to miss most of his third NFL season, he told the "The Best Business Show" podcast in an episode that aired in July 2021.
The injury forced Barkley to reflect, he said: Running backs endure a lot of physical contact, and tend to have shorter careers than many other professional athletes. If he wasn't going to play for as long as some other superstar athletes — people like LeBron James or Tom Brady — he needed to embrace financial strategies outside of football "to create generational wealth" with his paychecks, he said.
"When you sit out of football for a whole year, you realize that this game could be taken away from you," said Barkley.
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