# Khosla Ventures

> Source: https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/khosla_ventures
> Updated: 2026-06-23
> Categories: AI Companies, Venture Capital
> From AI Wiki (https://aiwiki.ai), a free encyclopedia of artificial intelligence. Quote with attribution.

Khosla Ventures is a Menlo Park, California venture capital firm, founded in 2004 by [Vinod Khosla](/wiki/vinod_khosla), that was the first venture capital firm to invest in [OpenAI](/wiki/openai), writing a $50 million check in 2019 at a roughly $1 billion valuation that financial press estimated by early 2026 to be worth several billion dollars, one of the highest-multiple bets in venture history.[3][5][21] Khosla, the billionaire engineer who co-founded [Sun Microsystems](/wiki/sun_microsystems) and spent nearly two decades as a partner at [Kleiner Perkins](/wiki/kleiner_perkins), built the firm around contrarian, science-driven bets on hard technology, an approach he describes as backing founders willing to attempt things that look improbable.[1] It invests across enterprise and consumer software, financial technology, healthcare, robotics, defense, energy and materials science, and, since the late 2010s, artificial intelligence, and managed roughly $16 billion to $18 billion in assets by 2025.[1][7]

## Who founded Khosla Ventures?

Vinod Khosla was born in 1955 in India and trained as an engineer, earning a bachelor's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, a master's in biomedical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, and an MBA from Stanford.[2] In 1982 he co-founded Sun Microsystems alongside Andy Bechtolsheim, Bill Joy and Scott McNealy, serving as the company's first chairman and chief executive.[2] He later joined Kleiner Perkins, where as a general partner he backed companies including Juniper Networks and Nexgen.[2] In 2004 Khosla left Kleiner Perkins to start Khosla Ventures, having built a personal fortune of roughly $1.5 billion from Sun and his Kleiner years, and he self-funded the first two funds so that he could pursue longer-horizon and higher-risk ideas, which he has called "science experiments," than a conventional institutional fund would tolerate.[2] He built the firm with co-founders Samir Kaul and David Weiden, both of whom remain managing directors.[1]

Away from the firm, Khosla has drawn attention for a long-running personal dispute over Martins Beach, a cove in San Mateo County, California, reachable only across property he bought in 2008. After he restricted public access in 2010, the Surfrider Foundation sued in 2013, California courts ruled against him, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal in 2018.[19] The matter concerns Khosla personally rather than Khosla Ventures.

## How large is Khosla Ventures and how are its funds structured?

Khosla self-funded his first two funds before opening later vehicles to institutional limited partners.[2] Fund III raised roughly $1 billion for early and growth stage companies, paired with a $300 million seed fund for higher-risk opportunities.[1] By October 2021 the firm reported about $15 billion in assets under management and closed approximately $1.4 billion in new commitments, split between a roughly $1 billion later-stage fund and a $400 million seed fund.[1] A $557 million opportunity fund followed in January 2022.[1] In November 2023 the firm gathered roughly $3 billion across three vehicles, anchored by a $1.6 billion flagship Fund VIII, a $500 million seed fund, and a $1 billion later-stage fund.[17]

In February 2025 securities filings showed Khosla Ventures setting out to raise about $3.5 billion across three funds, a figure roughly 17 percent larger than the 2023 haul.[7] Around half, roughly $1.75 billion, was earmarked for its ninth flagship venture fund, with the remainder divided between a $1.1 billion growth fund for later-stage companies and a $650 million seed fund.[7] Later reporting by The Information put the combined target closer to $3.95 billion.[8] By 2025 the firm managed an estimated $16 billion to $18 billion in assets under management.[7] The firm has consistently run a flagship early-stage fund, a seed fund and a later-stage growth fund in parallel, a structure that lets it follow founders from first check through to large pre-IPO rounds.

| Fund or vehicle | Year | Size |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Fund III (early/growth) + seed | mid-2010s | ~$1B + $300M |
| Later-stage + seed funds | 2021 | ~$1B + $400M |
| Opportunity fund | Jan 2022 | $557M |
| Fund VIII + seed + later-stage | Nov 2023 | $1.6B + $500M + $1B (~$3B total) |
| Ninth flagship + growth + seed | 2025 target | ~$1.75B + $1.1B + $650M (~$3.5B total) |

## What is Khosla Ventures' investment thesis?

Khosla Ventures pursues what it frames as "bold" deep-technology bets, favoring first-principles innovation in large markets over incremental software.[18] Khosla has long argued that most of a venture portfolio's value comes from a handful of improbable outliers, and that a firm should accept a high failure rate in exchange for the rare breakthrough.[18] He summarized the posture in one interview as, "I don't mind failing, but when we succeed it has to be worth it."[18] That willingness to lose money was tested in the firm's first wave of clean-technology investing, sometimes called cleantech 1.0, when biofuel startups Range Fuels and KiOR went bankrupt despite large private and government backing.[20] The firm balanced those losses with longer-dated science bets such as battery developer [QuantumScape](/wiki/quantumscape), which went public in 2020, and fusion startup [Commonwealth Fusion Systems](/wiki/commonwealth_fusion_systems), whose $115 million Series A it led in 2019.[1]

Since the late 2010s the thesis has tilted heavily toward AI. Vinod Khosla has become one of the most vocal AI advocates among venture investors, arguing that the technology represents the largest economic shift of his career.[18] He has predicted that AI will be capable of performing roughly 80 percent of all jobs by 2030,[10] that cheap automated labor and a coming wave of humanoid robots will make many goods sharply cheaper,[11] and that the United States is in what he calls a "techno-economic war" with China in which leadership in AI is a national priority.[22] Speaking on Fortune's Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast in 2026, Khosla, a vocal Trump critic, said, "We are in a techno-economic war with China," adding, "We have to win that race."[22] By 2025 the firm was experimenting with a private-equity-style strategy of acquiring mature businesses such as call centers and professional services providers and re-engineering them with AI, an approach managing director Samir Kaul described as something the firm would test cautiously while being "a good steward" of investor capital.[12]

## Why is the OpenAI bet so important?

Khosla Ventures' defining AI investment is OpenAI.[9] In 2019 the firm wrote a $50 million check into what was then a capped-profit entity attached to a nonprofit with no commercial product, after Elon Musk declined to follow through on a pledged $1 billion.[3] Khosla has said the investment bought a stake of about 5 percent at a valuation reported to be near $1 billion, and that it was the largest initial check he had written in 40 years by a factor of two.[3] He has described sending limited partners an apology letter acknowledging the deal looked "foolhardy" while saying he was "doing it anyway," framing the bet as both a push to democratize AI and a geopolitical hedge against Chinese dominance of the field.[3] The firm publicly identifies itself, and is widely described in the press, as OpenAI's first venture capital backer.[5][9]

The relationship became national news during OpenAI's November 2023 governance crisis, when Vinod Khosla loudly backed Sam Altman's return as chief executive and detailed how much his firm had riding on the outcome.[4] In October 2024 the firm raised a $405 million special purpose vehicle to participate in OpenAI's round, which valued the company at $157 billion, though the firm declined to specify how much of that capital was its own versus pooled from outside investors.[6] As OpenAI's valuation climbed to roughly $500 billion in late 2025 and was reported near $852 billion by April 2026, the original $50 million position has been estimated by financial press at anywhere from about $1.5 billion (a cap-table stake of roughly 0.18 percent) to as much as $8 billion, making it one of the highest-multiple venture bets of the [generative AI](/wiki/generative_ai) era.[3][21] Khosla publicly defended OpenAI's 2026 valuation, telling Bloomberg that the $852 billion figure was "not too high" given the company's growth.[23]

## What is in Khosla Ventures' AI portfolio?

Beyond OpenAI, Khosla Ventures built one of the more active AI portfolios in venture capital, spanning developer tools, [AI agents](/wiki/ai_agents), model research and healthcare. It led a $33 million round in 2024 for Symbolica, a startup founded by former Tesla autopilot engineer George Morgan that is pursuing smaller, reasoning-focused symbolic models as an alternative to ever-larger neural networks.[13] In April 2026 it led a $150 million Series C for Factory, an agentic software-engineering startup whose "Droids" handle testing, review, documentation and deployment and run model-agnostically across foundation models from OpenAI, [Anthropic](/wiki/anthropic) and others, valuing the company at $1.5 billion.[14] The firm is also an investor in coding platform [Replit](/wiki/replit) and has continued to seed early healthcare AI, including a pre-seed round it led in 2025 for Radical, a startup applying AI to personalize cancer care.[15] NVIDIA and other strategic backers frequently co-invest alongside the firm in its frontier deals.

| Company | Round / Year | Khosla Ventures role |
| --- | --- | --- |
| [OpenAI](/wiki/openai) | Early round, 2019 ($50M); SPV, 2024 ($405M) | First VC investor; lead early backer |
| Symbolica | Funding round, 2024 ($33M) | Lead |
| Factory | Series C, 2026 ($150M at $1.5B) | Lead |
| Radical | Pre-seed, 2025 | Lead |
| [Replit](/wiki/replit) | Series B extension, 2023 ($97.4M at $1.16B) | Participant |
| Cartwheel | Seed, 2024 | Participant |

## Notable people and exits

Khosla Ventures is run by a small group of managing directors. Founder Vinod Khosla remains the firm's central figure, supported by co-founders Samir Kaul, who leads healthcare investing, and David Weiden, who focuses on fintech and consumer technology.[1] In February 2024 the firm rehired Keith Rabois as a managing director after five years at Founders Fund; Rabois had previously led the firm's first institutional checks into [DoorDash](/wiki/doordash), [Affirm](/wiki/affirm) and Faire.[1] Other senior investors include Sven Strohband, who also serves as chief technology officer, and partners such as Adina Tecklu and Ethan Choi.

The firm's exit record spans both consumer and enterprise technology. Early bets that reached the public markets include DoorDash, which went public in 2020 at roughly a $72 billion valuation; payments company Square, now Block, which Khosla backed in 2009 ahead of its 2015 IPO; lending company Affirm, which went public in 2021; grocery-delivery company [Instacart](/wiki/instacart), an early-2010s investment that listed in 2023; developer platform [GitLab](/wiki/gitlab), backed in 2015 before its 2021 IPO; identity company Okta; and cancer-diagnostics company Guardant Health.[1] In frontier technology the firm was an early investor in launch company Rocket Lab and battery maker QuantumScape.[1] These liquid exits, combined with secondary sales of maturing AI positions in 2025 and 2026, have given the firm the cash distributions that fund its continued contrarian bets. The combination of those returns and the OpenAI windfall left Khosla Ventures, by the middle of the decade, positioned among the most influential backers of the artificial intelligence build-out, alongside peers such as [Andreessen Horowitz](/wiki/andreessen_horowitz), [Sequoia Capital](/wiki/sequoia_capital) and [Thrive Capital](/wiki/thrive_capital).

## References

- [Khosla Ventures, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khosla_Ventures)
- [Vinod Khosla, Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinod_Khosla)
- [OpenAI's original VC bet: How Vinod Khosla stepped in after Elon Musk balked, Fortune, March 13, 2026](https://fortune.com/2026/03/13/openai-original-vc-bet-how-vinod-khosla-stepped-in-after-elon-musk-balked/)
- [Vinod Khosla details how much his venture firm had on the line before Sam Altman's reinstatement, Fortune, December 4, 2023](https://fortune.com/2023/12/04/khosla-ventures-openai-sam-altman/)
- [OpenAI's first VC backer weighs in on generative AI, Fortune, February 2, 2023](https://fortune.com/2023/02/02/openais-first-vc-backer-khosla-ventures-weighs-in-on-the-future-of-generative-a-i/)
- [Khosla Ventures just backed OpenAI with $405M more, but not necessarily with its own capital, TechCrunch, October 11, 2024](https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/11/khosla-ventures-just-backed-openai-with-405m-more-but-not-necessarily-with-its-own-capital/)
- [Khosla Ventures seeks $3.5B in fresh capital, TechCrunch, February 24, 2025](https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/24/khosla-ventures-seeks-3-5b-in-fresh-capital/)
- [Khosla Ventures targets nearly $4 billion in new funds, The Information](https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/khosla-ventures-targets-nearly-4-billion-new-funds)
- [Khosla Ventures, OpenAI portfolio page](https://www.khoslaventures.com/portfolio/openai)
- [Silicon Valley investor Vinod Khosla predicts AI will replace 80% of jobs by 2030, Fortune, July 1, 2025](https://fortune.com/2025/07/01/silicon-valley-investor-vinod-khosla-ai-job-prediction-interview/)
- [Famed investor Vinod Khosla predicts free AI labor will lead to an era of few jobs and great abundance, Fortune, March 4, 2026](https://fortune.com/2026/03/04/vinod-khosla-investor-openai-free-ai-labor-no-work-few-jobs-abundance/)
- [Khosla Ventures among VCs experimenting with AI-infused roll-ups of mature companies, TechCrunch, May 23, 2025](https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/23/khosla-ventures-among-vcs-experimenting-with-ai-infused-roll-ups-of-mature-companies/)
- [Vinod Khosla is betting on a former Tesla autopilot engineer who quit to build small AI models that can reason, Fortune, April 9, 2024](https://fortune.com/2024/04/09/vinod-khosla-former-tesla-autopilot-engineer-ai-models/)
- [Factory AI raises $150M Series C at $1.5B valuation, Tech Funding News, April 2026](https://techfundingnews.com/factory-ai-150m-series-c-unicorn-ai-agents-developers/)
- [This Khosla Ventures-backed startup is using AI to personalize cancer care, Fortune, December 4, 2025](https://fortune.com/2025/12/04/khosla-ventures-backed-radical-health-stealth-seed-ai-personalize-cancer-care/)
- [Replit, Raising $97.4M at $1.16B Valuation, Replit blog](https://blog.replit.com/b-extension)
- [Khosla Ventures Nears $3B For Funds Even As Venture Slows, Crunchbase News](https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/khosla-ventures-funds-openai-dd2/)
- [Why Vinod Khosla Is All In on AI, Time](https://time.com/7023237/vinod-khosla-interview/)
- [U.S. Supreme Court Finalizes Win for Martins Beach Access, Surfrider Foundation](https://www.surfrider.org/news/us-supreme-court-finalizes-win-for-martins-beach-access)
- [Billionaire Vinod Khosla's big dreams for biofuels fail to catch fire, The Washington Post, November 27, 2014](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/billionaire-vinod-khoslas-big-dreams-for-biofuels-fail-to-catch-fire/2014/11/27/04899d12-69d7-11e4-9fb4-a622dae742a2_story.html)
- [OpenAI Cap Table Breakdown: Every Investor Return at $852 Billion Valuation, StartupHub.ai, 2026](https://www.startuphub.ai/ai-news/analysis/2026/openai-cap-table-investor-returns-852-billion-valuation)
- [OpenAI investor Vinod Khosla, a vocal Trump critic, agrees with the president on AI and China: 'We are in a techno-economic war', Fortune, March 6, 2026](https://fortune.com/2026/03/06/vinod-khosla-china-techno-economic-war-ai-semiconductors/)
- [OpenAI's $852B Valuation Not Too High: Vinod Khosla, Bloomberg, April 15, 2026](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2026-04-15/openai-s-852b-valuation-not-too-high-vinod-khosla-video)