How Vinod built the fortune
Vinod Khosla's wealth comes from two careers in Silicon Valley: first as a founder, then as an investor. In 1982 he co-founded Sun Microsystems with Andy Bechtolsheim, Scott McNealy and Bill Joy. Sun built powerful workstations running the Unix operating system on networked computers, a product that found strong demand among engineers, universities and financial firms. Khosla served as Sun's first chief executive and chairman, raising money and setting the company's early direction, before leaving in 1984 as it began a period of rapid growth.
He then joined the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers in 1986 as a general partner. Over nearly two decades there he backed companies that built the networking and internet infrastructure of the 1990s, and he became known for supporting bold technical ideas. His investments included Juniper Networks, which made routers for internet service providers, and a number of optical networking startups, along with early internet companies such as Excite. The gains from these funds, and from his own stakes, made him one of the most successful venture investors of the period.
In 2004 he left Kleiner to start Khosla Ventures, initially investing his own money before raising outside funds. The firm has placed large bets on areas where technology could disrupt big industries, including clean energy, food, healthcare and artificial intelligence. It was an early investor in OpenAI, putting money into the company in 2019, and its portfolio has also included Impossible Foods, DoorDash, Instacart and many startups in medicine and climate technology. Not every bet worked: several clean energy investments, including the biofuel company Range Fuels, failed.
Companies and holdings
Khosla's holdings are concentrated in his venture firm and the stakes it holds on his behalf. He is known for investing in companies with a high risk of failure but very large potential payoffs, and for publicly arguing that most experts underestimate how quickly technology can change established industries. Khosla Ventures manages several funds, including seed funds for very early companies and larger funds for later rounds. Khosla himself remains closely involved in investment decisions and often works directly with founders.
- Khosla Ventures, founder and managing partner
- Personal stakes in Khosla Ventures portfolio companies, including OpenAI
- Former co-founder and first CEO of Sun Microsystems
- Former general partner at Kleiner Perkins
Early life and career
Khosla was born in Delhi, India, into a family with a military background. As a teenager he read about the founding of Intel and became interested in building a technology company of his own. He studied electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and then moved to the United States to earn a master's degree in biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.
He went on to Stanford University for an MBA, completing it in 1980. While at Stanford he became involved with Daisy Systems, an early maker of computer aided design tools for electronics, and he co-founded it before starting Sun two years later with fellow Stanford graduates. That early exposure to engineering startups shaped his view that small teams of technical founders could take on much larger companies. He has said that he decided early on that he wanted to start a company rather than work for one, and his move to the United States was driven by that goal.
Philanthropy and public life
Khosla and his wife Neeru have signed the Giving Pledge. Neeru Khosla co-founded the CK-12 Foundation, which offers free digital textbooks and learning tools, and the couple have supported education, microfinance and social enterprise projects in India and the United States.
Khosla is also a frequent public commentator on technology, energy and artificial intelligence, writing essays and speaking at conferences. He became involved in a long legal dispute in California over public access to Martins Beach, a coastal property he bought in 2008 and then closed to the public. The case moved through state courts and drew attention to coastal access laws. He has also funded research and programs on climate and energy and has argued publicly for an expanded role for technology in healthcare and education.