Vinod Khosla is one of the most successful venture capitalists in the world, mostly as a General Partner at Kleiner Perkins and before that he was one of the founders of Sun Microsystems. He recently started Khosla Ventures where using his own money he has been making investments in the areas of clean tech, environmentally friendly technologies and micro-finance. (Trivia: I had the opportunity to work in Deeshaa Ventures which was based on the idea of RISC (Download : RISC paper) co-authored by Atanu Dey and Khosla)
For sometime now he has been a big proponent of alternative energy and the way to end the reliance on oil. On his website he provides a good set of resources on his ideas in these areas.
Khosla gave a speech as part of the Management of Technology Lecture Series earlier this month at the Haas School of Business in Berkeley. VC Ratings was there and provides a fantastic overview of his energy portfolio. (Hat tip: Peak Energy Delicious)
Most of the companies are based around the general themes of making coal, materials, efficiency and oil more efficient. Then, he further refines them by grouping his investments according to the type of energy that the portfolio companies are trying to improve or harness. Here are the specific investment themes and companies that fall into each category:
1) Cellulosic – Mascoma, Celunol, Range Fuels, 1 stealth startup
2) Future Fuels – LS9, Gevo, Amyris Biotechnologies, Coskata Energy
3) Efficiency – Transonic Combustion, GroupIV Semiconductor, 1 stealth startup
4) Homes – Living Homes, Global Homes
5) Natural Gas – Great Point Energy
7) Tools – Nanostellar, Codon Devices, Praj
8) Water – 2 stealth startup
9) Plastic – Segetis, 1 stealth startup
10) Corn/Sugar Fuels – Altra, Cilion, Hawaii Bio
The list of startups provides far more information about Khosla’s efforts in this area than has been revealed before. Khosla’s web site only lists two cleantech startups. And a few others such as Altria and Cilion have been publicly announced listing Khosla Ventures as an investor.
The best part of the above list is not even the sheer scale of his investments. It is his understanding of the big picture in energy options and dividing all his investments based on specific area including energy efficiency. He is betting wide in this area which may suggest that one, he is not yet decided on the best combination of alternative energy options that will be needed or two, we can interpret that it is a combination of sources combined with energy efficiency measures that will make the difference.
All in all, this is amazing and one to follow.
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