Khosla Ventures

Khosla Ventures, a Menlo Park, CA-based venture capital firm, today announced two new funds (Khosla Ventures III, Khosla Ventures Seed) and stated that these funds have raised more than one billion dollars. In addiiton, Khosla Ventures announced that Gideon Yu and Jim Kim have joined as partners.

"The broader capital base and team allow us to accelerate what we do, which I call venture assistance — we assist and mentor entrepreneurs," said Vinod Khosla, the firm's founder. "We will continue to foster high risk technology innovation and unproven but high impact science experiments, now with greater resources."

About the New Funds

  • Khosla Ventures III: Originally targeted at $750 million, this fund represents the first external funds raised by Khosla Ventures.  Khosla Ventures III will make early and mid-stage venture investments, with the potential to provide additional funding to companies that have received these investments as they grow.
  • Khosla Ventures Seed: Originally targeted at $250 million, this fund will focus on the highest risk projects that may not be able to obtain funding from other sources.

Khosla Ventures indicated that amount of money raised for these funds exceeded their original targets. The focus of both funds will be consistent with Khosla Ventures' prior investing activity and will include clean energy, efficiency, sustainable materials and information technology.

New Partners Announced

Khosla Ventures also announced that Gideon Yu and Jim Kim have joined the firm as partners.  Yu has previously served as Chief Financial Officer of Facebook, Chief Financial Officer of YouTube, and Treasurer / Senior Vice President Finance at Yahoo. Kim's experience includes working in cleantech investing at CMEA and at GE Capital.

"We are not financiers. Capital is a small part of what we provide to entrepreneurs," said Pierre Lamond. "We like to understand the technologies we invest in ourselves, then focus on building the right team that understands the underlying technology. This is becoming even more critical in the technology-intensive world of Cleantech."

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