Khosla Ventures

Founded by Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, the firm concentrates on technically difficult companies where success would represent a genuine discontinuity rather than an improvement.

It was the lead institutional investor in OpenAI's first outside round in 2019, several years before generative AI became a mainstream investment category.

The firm's stated philosophy is that most venture returns come from a small number of very large outcomes, so it deliberately funds high-probability-of-failure companies with enormous payoffs if they work.

Climate, food systems, healthcare delivery, and artificial intelligence have been recurring areas of concentration.

• Small seed experiments alongside large concentrated positions
• Willing to fund science that is years from commercial viability
• Direct and technically detailed diligence
• Long time horizons on hard technology
• Active involvement in company strategy

OpenAI · Square · DoorDash · Instacart · Impossible Foods · Commonwealth Fusion Systems

Vinod Khosla founded and leads the firm. Its partnership includes investors with backgrounds in science and engineering as well as company building.

The firm is unusually willing to fund technical risk, but its diligence goes deep into the science and its partners are direct to the point of bluntness about weaknesses.

Founders should expect the conversation to be about whether the technology can work at all, not about the go-to-market plan.