Billionaires aren’t going to save the planet: Featuring Steve Ballmer, Aspiration Partners, the LA Clippers, and Kawhi Leonard’s “no show” endorsement deal
The podcast “Pablo Torre Finds Out” obtained 3,487 pages of internal corporate documents from Aspiration.
Steve Ballmer is the seventh richest person in the world. He joined Microsoft in 1980 as employee number 30. He was CEO of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. When he left Microsoft, he bought the Los Angeles Clippers for US$2 billion.
In September 2021, the Clippers announce a US$300 million partnership with Aspiration Partners, a firm that ran an online bank and acted as a carbon credit broker. Aspiration also promised to plant trees.
“Aspiration becoming our first founding partner supports the stake we are planting in the ground to make Intuit Dome the most sustainable arena in the world,” Ballmer said in a statement. The goal was to operate the Intuit Dome “100 per cent carbon free”.
By February 2023, Aspiration claimed to have planted 101 million trees, helping to restore “over 83,000 hectares of degraded forest habitat in Kenya, Mozambique, Madagascar, Honduras, and the Philippines”. The target was 5 billion trees over a period of 20 years.
But a 2021 investigation by ProPublica revealed that Aspiration’s tree planting claims were exaggerated.
That wasn’t the only thing Aspiration exaggerated. The company claimed to have “5 million passionate members”, when the actual number of accounts was 592,148.
And the company spectacularly exaggerated how much money it was making. Aspiration’s co-founder, Joe Sanberg, recently agreed to plead guilty to a US$248 million scheme to defraud investors.
Meanwhile the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating Aspiration about the quality of the carbon credits the company was selling.
And in March 2025, Aspiration filed for bankruptcy.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
And that’s where the podcast “Pablo Torre Finds Out” comes into the story. On 3 September 2025, PTFO’s latest episode went out: “Kawhi Leonard Signed a Secret $28M Deal. Steve Ballmer Funded a Fraud. We Followed the Money.”
It’s well worth watching — even for those of you (like me) who have never watched a game of basketball and had never heard of Kawhi Leonard.
PTFO explains it all. Including the fact that the National Basketball Association has a salary cap, to prevent the seventh richest person in the world (say) from persuading the best players to move to his team, by sweetening the deal with freebies, bonuses, gifts, or donations.
PTFO obtained 3,487 pages of internal corporate documents from Aspiration and spoke to seven former Aspiration employees.
PTFO looked into Aspiration’s bankruptcy filing. In a list of creditors is a company called KL2 Aspire LLC. Aspiration owes the company US$7 million.
The clue is in the name of the company. Kawhi Leonard’s initials are KL. Leonard’s NBA jersey number 2. And Aspire refers to Aspiration.
The company was incorporated by Kawhi Leonard on 22 November 2021.
The “no show” endorsement deal
PTFO uncovered the Endorsement Agreement between KL2 Aspire and Aspiration Partners. The Agreement was signed on 1 April 2022 and states that Leonard is to help promote and market Aspiration. In return, Aspiration agreed to pay KL2 Aspire US$28 million in cash over a four year period.
The Endorsement Agreement is signed by Kawhi Leonard and Aspiration’s co-founder, Andrei Cherny:
PTFO spoke to a former Aspiration employee who said that when he was told about the endorsement deal with Leonard, he was told that “it was to circumvent the salary cap. LOL.”
The former Aspiration employee added that the deal with Leonard was “the single largest sponsorship deal that Aspiration ever made. . . . Every other celebrity endorsement combined would not have met even a quarter of Kawhi Leonard’s endorsement.”
Despite this, Leonard did not publicly endorse Aspiration even once. Contractually, Leonard did not have to do anything. The Endorsement Agreement states that,
KL2 may decline to proceed with any action desired by the Company under Section 3.2 if Leonard believes that such proposed actions are not consistent with his beliefs.
The Agreement states that if requested by Aspiration, “KL2 shall cause Leonard to be available and participate in five (5) organic comments/likes/RTs as requested by Aspiration in support of annual programming as mutually agreed”. In fact, Leonard made no comments, likes, or retweets.
Section 3.2 outlines what Aspiration would like Leonard to do to endorse the company. The word “beliefs” is not defined in the Agreement. PTFO describes it as a US$28 million “no show” endorsement deal.
Under the Agreement, Aspiration had the right to terminate the deal “if Leonard is no longer an employee of the Team for any reason”. The “Team” is the Clippers. In other words, as long as Leonard plays for the Clippers, he’ll be paid by Aspiration.
Ballmer’s payment to Aspiration
In December 2021, Bloomberg reported that,
Oaktree Capital Management LP and investment affiliates of billionaire Steve Ballmer have committed $315 million in additional financing to green fintech company Aspiration . . .
PTFO uncovered a Schedule of Investors document that includes two payments from Steve Ballmer’s Polpat LLC for a total of almost US$50 million to Aspiration.
In the podcast, Pablo Torre says that,
“According to all seven former Aspiration employees I spoke to, that enormous infusion of money from Steve Ballmer, US$50 million, is what allowed the allegedly fraudulent green bank to quite literally pay Kawhi Leonard US$28 million for an alleged no show job.”
The Boston Sports Journal reports that there was a further payment to Leonard:
According to a high-level source, Leonard also cut a side deal with Aspiration to receive an additional $20 million in company stock. The stock was to be paid out from Sanberg’s personal holdings in the company over four years.
The NBA has announced that it will investigate whether the payment from Aspiration to Leonard allowed the Clippers to circumvent salary cap rules.
The Clippers provided a statement to PTFO — here it is in full:
Neither Mr. Ballmer nor the Clippers circumvented the salary cap or engaged in any misconduct related to Aspiration. Any contrary assertion is provably false. The team ended its relationship with Aspiration years ago, during the 2022-23 season, when Aspiration defaulted on its obligations. Neither the Clippers nor Mr. Ballmer was aware of any improper activity by Aspiration or its co-founder until after the government instituted its investigation. The team and Mr. Ballmer stand ready to assist law enforcement in any way they can.