Quick Facts of

  • First NameVinod Khosla
  • Net Worth$ 2.1 billion
  • CareerBusinessman

Vinod Khosla is a founder of Khosla Ventures, a successful private venture capital firm operated by a single investor. It invests in experimental technologies like mobile, biomedicine, robotics, and more. As of 2017, the company had total assets of $5 billion.

The accomplished venture capitalist Khosla is also regarded as one of the successful and influential personalities in Silicon Valley, California. Before launching his own fund, Khosla spent 18-year at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (now known as Kleiner Perkins). 

According to Forbes, Vinod Khosla has a net worth of $2.1 billion as of Jan 2020.     

Behind his splendid business career, the billionaire Khosla is also involved in an infamous failed decade-long legal battle to privatize Martins Beach, overturning the California Coastal Act of 1976. 

Vinod Khosla Listed Among The 400 Richest People In US By ‘Forbes’

Vinod Khosla (then net worth of $1.67 billion) was enlisted in the list of 400 richest people in the USA made by Forbes in 2014. His net worth is $2.1 billion as of Jan 2020. 

Khosla’s income came from his various business ventures. After spending nearly two-decade with the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins as a general partner, he went on to start his own fund Khosla Ventures. Its value was about $5 billion in assets under management as of Sep 2017.

Khosla Ventures Fund III raised $1 billion of investor commitments in order to invest in traditional early-stage and aspiring enterprises. Furthermore, it also secured $300 million for Khosla Seed.

Indian American billionaire businessman Vinod Khosla   Image Source: Little India 

Vinod is also a former co-founder of LS-9 Inc, former venture-funded company and Sun Microsystems, was an American manufacturer of computer workstations, servers, and software. The biodiesel production company Renewable Energy Group acquired LS9 for $40 million, and the latter sold to the American multinational computer technology corporation, Oracle Corporation, for staggering $7.4 billion. 

Khosla’s wealth also diversely came from his many other business endeavors like HackerRank, a technology company, SKS Microfinance, an Indian microfinance company, and more. 

Khosla owns a Chevrolet which worth ranges from $13,220 to $55,900.

Charity Work 

In May 2011, Vinod Khosla, along with his loving wife Neeru, promised to give away at least half of their vast fortunes that estimated at $1.4 billion (Rs 6,300 crore) to non-profit entities, joining the pledge started by billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. The pledge consists of 400 wealthiest people in the world, and it is estimated to be worth $1.2 trillion combined. 

Vinod also supports his wife Neeru’s California-based non-profit organization CK-12 Foundation, which aims to evolve open-source textbooks and a low-cost K-12 education in the United States and the rest of the world. The duo also donated $600,000 to the Wikimedia Foundation.

Moreover, the businessman is also a pivotal member of many other charitable organizations such as The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and among others. He is also a part of the board of trustees of the Blum Center for Developing Economies at the University of California. It aims to address the crisis of extreme poverty and disease globally as well as to find its solutions. 

His Decade-Long Martins Beach Dispute

It’s been nearly a decade since the billionaire tech investor Vinod Khosla is engaged in a bitter legal dispute to personalize the beach. In 2010, the first lawsuit was filed in California state court after Khosla began to block people from entering the beach. 

Although the businessman won an early judgment, things became more challenging after a suit he lost, brought by the Surfrider Foundation. San Mateo Superior Court ordered that he couldn’t block people from accessing the beach without first obtaining a permit from the California Coastal Commission. 

Sources address that Khosla bought the property for roughly $32 million back in 2008. And he started keeping the public off a piece of the beach by 2010. Khosla put on an offer worth $30 million, saying he would sell a small slice of his property to enable the public to gain access to the beach again. 

The Californian court ruled that the founder of Khosla Ventures must restore public access to Martins Beach in August 2017. The following year, Vinod went on to file an appeal with the Supreme Court. But, in October of that year, the Supreme Court announced that they could not take any hearing appealed by the California court. 

The San Mateo County discovered that the previous owner of the property had not permitted the public from access to Martins Beach in November 2018. 

In January 2020, the California Coastal Commission also sued Khosla, alleging he broke the rule of the California Coastal Act of 1976.  

Short Bio: Vinod Khosla 

Vinod Khosla was born on January 28, 1955, in India. He holds dual citizenship, American and Indian. His father was in the Indian Army force. He did his schooling from Mount St Mary’s School. 

He obtained a B.Tech in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He later went on to join the Carnegie Mellon University and earned a master’s in biomedical engineering. 

Furthermore, Khosla also got his MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. Following his MBA, he landed the job at the electronic design automation company Daisy Systems.

Vinod Khosla with his spouse Neeru Khosla   Image Source: Celebrity Net Worth 

In 1980, Vinod Khosla tied the knot with his childhood sweetheart Neeru Khosla, the co-founder, and chairman of the non-profit CK12 Foundation.  

The couple is blessed with four children Nina KhoslaNina KhoslaNeal Khosla, and Anu Khosla

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