Venture Capital · Profile from Venture Capital Research Companion
Khosla Ventures
Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla's Menlo Park firm. It is built on contrarian "science experiment" bets, with a willingness to lose 1x to make 100x. That approach produced an expensive cleantech washout in its first decade, then outsized wins in fintech, food tech, space and, above all, OpenAI.
At a glance
- Founded
- 2004, Menlo Park, California
- Founders
- Vinod Khosla (after ~18 years as a general partner at Kleiner Perkins)
- Headquarters
- 2128 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA
- Ownership / structure
- Private partnership controlled by Vinod Khosla; closed-end funds raised from institutional LPs since 2009 (the first two funds were Khosla's own capital)
- Leadership (2026)
- Vinod Khosla (founder, managing director, final decision-maker); managing directors reported to include Samir Kaul, Sven Strohband, David Weiden and Keith Rabois (rejoined 2024) (verify current roster)
- AUM / capital raised
- ~$15bn+ in cumulative commitments (reported); 2025 vintage ~$3.5–4bn across early, seed and opportunity funds (reported); 2026 talks for up to ~$5.5bn (reported, verify)
- Stage focus
- Seed and Series A by preference, with "science-risk" companies a speciality; opportunity funds for later rounds in existing portfolio companies
- Signature investments
- OpenAI, Square, Impossible Foods, DoorDash, Opendoor, Affirm, Rocket Lab, QuantumScape, GitLab (Series A lead, reported); failures: KiOR, Range Fuels, much of the 2006–2010 biofuels portfolio
10 deals and moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2006
Range Fuels
Series A / Early Venture
2007
KiOR
Series A / Founding Investment
2009
Square
Series A
2011
Impossible Foods
Seed / Series A
2012
QuantumScape
Early Venture
2013
DoorDash
Seed
2013
Rocket Lab
Series A
2014
Affirm
Series A
2014
Opendoor
Seed / First Round
2019
OpenAI
Capped-Profit LP Investment