Khosla’s Clean Tech VC Fund Beats the Odds, Raises $1bn
- This man likes biofuels
A widely used catch phrase – or some variation of it – appearing in the media since the official start of the crisis this fall, goes something like this: “the global economic crisis, has left the [add required sector, in our case clean tech] reeling, unable to tap crucial funding…. ” This generic phrase and its variations have been used over and over to describe a harsh reality, specifically how the credit crunch has left industries across the board at a standstill, unable tap financing to support their growth.
Then there is Khosla Ventures, the Sand Hill Road clean tech-focused venture fund, which will be announcing sometime this week the closing of two funds totalling $1 billion, all dedicated to supporting early clean tech investments. This is impressive, considering that most don’t expect this sort of capital raising to happen until well into 2010.
But it seems that Khosla Ventures, founded by Silicon Valley veteran Vinod Khosla, can afford shortcuts. For one, Khosla is a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and a former partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, two leading Silicon Valley pioneers. Also, back in 2004, when clean tech was an afterthought and social media à la MySpace was all the rage, he launched Khosla Ventures, one of the sector’s first clean-tech focused VC fund.
Forbes.com reports Khosla is on the verge of announcing two new funds: a $250 million vehicle for seed-stage investments and a $750 million fund for larger deals dubbed “KVIII.” One fund has closed already, and the other could close soon, Forbes reports, citing people with knowledge of the funds. Khosla himself is expected to invest $150 million of his own money in the new funds. Other reported investors include CalPERS, the pension giant with $179.2 billion in assets.
But in a move underscoring how in this buyers market investors are more careful with how they put their money to work, there’s word that Khosla will set up a conflicts committee to oversee the $750 million KVIII fund. This was done to ensure that all of this fresh capital does not only support existing investments. The committee, which has yet to be formed, would specifically screen follow-on investments in existing Khosla companies that didn’t have another outside lead investor.
About the conflicts committee and why it was formed, Forbes writes:
“Khosla’s compromise was to suggest a review committee that would screen certain proposed investments before his firm funded them. One person with knowledge of the funds said the committee would review follow-on investments in existing Khosla companies that didn’t have another outside lead investor. Companies with another lead investor wouldn’t be reviewed–ostensibly because they’d already been endorsed by another VC firm, not just Khosla.”
Khosla has built a reputation for investing in high risk, cutting edge technologies. We last wrote about the fund last month when it joined Burill & Co. in a reported $5 million investment in HCL CleanTech, a developer of sugar-based biofuel. Another high risk investment for Khosla is its stake in LS9, the San Francisco-based developer of bacteria-based diesel. Such ventures are promising on paper but require multiple rounds of financing to even have a chance to go commercial.
