We construct near-optimal coresets for kernel density estimates for points in $\mathbb{R}^d$ when the kernel is positive definite. Specifically we show a polynomial time construction for a coreset of size $O(\sqrt{d}/\varepsilon\cdot \sqrt{\log 1/\varepsilon} )$, and we show a near-matching lower bound of size $Ω(\min\{\sqrt{d}/\varepsilon, 1/\varepsilon^2\})$. When $d\geq 1/\varepsilon^2$, it…