Vinod Khosla

Founder at Khosla Ventures · Joined 2004

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Biography

Vinod Khosla co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982, serving as its first CEO, before moving into venture capital as a General Partner at Kleiner Perkins for nearly two decades. In 2004, he founded his own firm, Khosla Ventures, built on the conviction that the biggest returns come from technology bets everyone else is too cautious to make - from early clean energy investments long before the category was fashionable to some of the earliest institutional capital behind OpenAI. True to his engineering training at IIT Delhi and Carnegie Mellon, Khosla has built a reputation for backing technically difficult, capital-intensive bets that more conservative investors pass on.

Education

Previous Experience

Notable Investments

Block (Square) XYZInstacart CARTOpenAIImpossible FoodsJuniper Networks JNPRCerentCommonwealth Fusion SystemsNexgenCerent CorporationExcite

Board Seats

Career Timeline

1982
Co-founds Sun Microsystems, serving as its first CEO before transitioning to venture capital.
1986
Joins Kleiner Perkins as a General Partner, investing there for nearly two decades.
2004
Founds Khosla Ventures, focused on high-risk, high-reward technology bets others consider too early.
2009
Makes an early investment in Square (now Block), years ahead of its 2015 IPO.
2019
Becomes an early institutional backer of OpenAI, one of the firm's highest-profile recent bets.

Sources & References

Wikipedia ↗Khosla Ventures ↗