Khosla Ventures, a venture capital firm baed in Silicon Valley, announced earlier this month that it has raised a new $1.05 billion fund – Khosla Ventures IV. The firm will continue its strategy of investing in early stage companies in the clean tech, IT, mobile, and Internet technology sectors.
"We have identified the 'Clean Dozen' companies in clean tech that can achieve unsubsidized market competitiveness and the 'Cool Dozen' categories in Internet and mobile in the post-PC world such as big data, emotion, interest graphs and consumer health," said Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla.
Khosla Ventures IV follows the Khosla Ventures III fund and Khosla Ventures seed fund. The Khosla Ventures III fund of $1 billion of investor commitments focused on traditional early stage and growth stage companies. Khosla Ventures also previously raised $300 million for the Khosla Ventures seed fund which invests in high-risk, high-return opportunities, particularly groundbreaking science or internet developments, besides traditional venture investments.
"We fundamentally invest in the companies that we expect to have significant impact, and that’s precisely what the Khosla Ventures IV fund will do," said Khosla. "We don't mind failing but do care that the impact be material if we do succeed; and we believe that our willingness to fail gives us an ability to succeed. We will continue to not compute IRR's when investing as we believe in helping entrepreneurs build companies with high impact and high option value that are not subject to traditional financial metrics."
"In clean tech, our IPO's and other exits that have generated almost a billion dollars in profits personify this strategy. We endeavor to be the earliest investors in disruptive Internet and mobile companies which have gone on to complete exciting financings such as Square, Jawbone, ZocDoc and Lookout,” continued Khosla. "Instead of following the herd strategy of investing where others are investing, we continue to try and originate new areas in both sectors. We will also continue to attempt new strategies in venture by providing more venture assistance to companies such as putting together an operational group." As Khosla has often said, "We are not in the venture capital business. We are in the venture assistance business."
You can view Khosla Ventures' cleantech portfolio here and prior coverage on Green VC here.