Venture capital firm Khosla Ventures launches two new cleantech funds

1 September 2009

California-based venture capital firm Khosla Ventures has launched two new funds, Khosla Ventures III and Khosla Ventures Seed, which together have raised in excess of $1bn.

The firm also appointed two new partners, Gideon Yu and Jim Kim.

‘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.’

The firm said it will continue to foster innovation in technology-based markets such as clean energy, efficiency and sustainable materials.

‘Our goals in renewables go beyond cleantech to maintech – we believe the infrastructure of society will be open to technical re-invention, creating very large new opportunities. Already this year, seven new companies have been added to our portfolio across cleantech and information technology including Skywatch in solar, HCL in cellulosic sugars, Hybra-Drive in efficiency, and Rayspan and SeaMicro in information technology.’

Khosla Ventures Seed fund, originally targeted at $250m, will focus on the highest risk projects, while Khosla Ventures III, originally targeted at $750m, pursues early and mid-stage venture investments, with additional capital available to the companies as they scale.

Yu was most recently CFO of Facebook, and prior to that was the CFO of YouTube and the treasurer / SVP finance at Yahoo. Kim previously worked in cleantech investing at CMEA and at GE Capital where he worked with companies including A123 Systems, Danotek and Solyndra.

Copyright © 2009 NewNet

Tags: cleantech, energy efficiency, venture capital

This story was published on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 2:29 pm and is filed under North America, energy efficiency, funds. You can follow any responses to article entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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