Either Vinod Khosla has the magic or institutional investors are easing back into venture capital, or both. His Khosla Ventures raised $1.1 billion for two new funds, with about $800 million going to Khosla Ventures III and $275 million for a new seed fund.
Taken together, the $1.1 billion is the biggest capital raise for a venture firm in two years, and if you count it as a first-time fund, it is the biggest capital raise in ten years. While these are technically the third and fourth funds managed by the firm, it is the first time Khosla Ventures is taking outside money. (CALPERS, the retirement fund for California state employees, is the biggest new limited partner). Up until now, the capital primarily came from Khosla himself, who is a billionaire, a former star partner at Kleiner Perkins, and a co-founder of Sun Microsystems.
He founded Khosla Ventures in 2004, and now the firm has eight partners. The firm also confirmed today that former Facebook CFO Gideon Yu is now a partner (you read it here first), as is new hire James Kim from CMEA Capital.
While Khosla is best known for funding clean tech startups these days, that is only about two thirds of his existing portfolio. Khosla Ventures is also an investor in Tapulous, Aliph/Jawbone, iLike, iSkoot, Slide, Rearden Commerce, RingCentral, and and Xobni. The new funds will continue to focus on both clean tech and IT in general.
Khosla Ventures is a venture capital firm started in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, Co-Founder of Sun Microsystems. The firm focuses on environmentally friendly technologies in addition to the traditional venture areas such as the Internet, computing, mobile and silicon technology arenas.
Gideon is currently a General Partner at Khosla Ventures. Previously, Gideon was the Chief Financial Officer of Facebook, where he led the $375 million investment round from Microsoft and Hong-Kong billionaire Li Ka Shing at a record $15 billion valuation. Before that, Gideon was a Partner at Sequoia Capital, and was also the Chief Financial Officer at YouTube where he negotiated its $1.65 billion sale to Google amidst a highly competitive auction for the company. Prior to YouTube, Gideon...
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