Khosla Ventures

The firm was founded in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, a former general partner of Kleiner Perkins.[4] The firm's first two investment vehicles were funded with Khosla's own personal capital and were not open to institutional investors. In March 2009, Pierre Lamond became General Partner.[5] In December 2009, Khosla completed fundraising for two new funds, to invest in cleantech and information technology start-ups.

Khosla Ventures Fund III secured $1 billion of investor commitments to invest in traditional early stage and growth stage companies. Khosla also raised $300 million for Khosla Seed, which will invest in higher-risk opportunities and science experiments.[6] The firm has invested in bio-refineries for energy and bioplastics, solar, wind, battery, engines, LED, HVAC efficiency and other environmentally friendly technologies.[7][8] The company focuses on technology risk based investing in very large markets.

Some companies funded by Khosla Ventures include: Academia.edu, Amyris, Bloom Energy, Plastiq Inc.,[9] Cosaint Technologies,[10] DB Networks, EcoMotors, GreatPoint Energy, Impossible Foods, Instacart, LS9 Inc.[11], Neverware, Panzura, SeaMicro, Snip.it, Tapingo, Thync, Relcy,[12][13] and Vectra Networks Inc..[14]

Its investments also include AliveCor,[15] AltaRock Energy,[16] Amyris,[17] AppNexus,[18] Ayasdi,[19] Big Switch Networks,[20] Blockstream,[21] Boku,[22] Boosted,[23] Bridge International Academies,[24] Cadre,[25] Climate Corporation,[26] Cylance,[27] DoorDash[28] and Flow Neuroscience.[29]

As of October 2015, Khosla Ventures was one of the five largest and most active investors in the space sector, which has had over US$10 billion of private capital invested in it since 2005.[30]

Khosla Labs is an investment and business-incubation firm founded by Vinod Khosla. In 2013, Khosla said that he started the company to explore the opportunities around Aadhar, the recently-implemented unique identity number system for residents of India. Khosla Labs has an Aadhaar-enabled authentication and verification product, called Aadhaar Bridge, and is licensed by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) (which collects the data for the system) to use the demographic data of Aadhar holders. The company played an important role in the 'Coalition for Aadhar' by petitioning the Indian Supreme Court in 2018. There has been criticism around the private sector- UIDAI connections, and Khosla Lab has been used an example. The company has had many executives who were previously part of UIDAI. Khosla Labs has given a loan of 21 lakh to an NGO called eGovernments Foundation, of which Nilekani himself was a founder. Besides Nilekani, Sanjay Jain, the chief product manager for the UIDAI from 2010 to 2012 then went on to be an entrepreneur at Khosla Labs. Similarly, Vivek Raghavan was a biometrics volunteer with UIDAI from 2010 to 2013, and he was a director of Khosla Labs until 2016.[31]

• Company website