Khosla Ventures related stories
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Moritz Revisits the Little KingdomPEOPLE PAGE: Sequoia’s Mike Moritz hits bookstores this month with a tome about Apple, Shriram is top VC on Forbes 400, Trailblazer Capital embraces Legos, Perkins takes to the sky
Slump Continues in Q3Deal making and fund-raising were down substantially from the same period last year
More Federal Money For AltaRockAltaRock received another $26.5 million in grants from the Department of Energy today for two new geothermal drilling projects -- despite claims /49145/clean-tech-woes-altarock-suspends-drilling/ that its drilling project in the California Geysers could cause earthquakes. The New York Times ran a story in June comparing Altarock's California project to a 2006 project in Basel, Switzerland, where an earthquake damaged buildings and frightened residents with a loud roaring noise. Aftershocks followed for several months. AltaRock -- which has raised over $30 million from Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, GreatPoint Ventures, Google.org and others to provide clean energy by extracting heat from rocks -- wasn't behind the Basel project and disputed the Times' claims. But the story prompted a review by the Department of Energy and the Bureau of Land Management, which said that although AltaRock could keep drilling, it couldn't fracture any rock in California until the agencies decided it was safe.
- DOE Funding Very-Early-Stage Clean Tech
The DOE's newly formed ARPA-E -- an Advanced Research Projects Agency for energy modeled after the Defense Department's DARPA, which created the Internet -- handed out $151 million in funding today to 37 companies and projects. Some are venture-funded -- companies backed by Khosla Ventures, Polaris, North Bridge, incTANK Ventures and the secretive X/Seed Capital are on the list. But most are still projects inside universities, federal labs or big companies. Some are in stealth mode, and some don't even have Web sites.
- Investments in U.S. VC funds plunge
Just 17 U.S.-based venture funds raised $1.6B in Q3
- VC Fund-Raising: Wait 'Til Next Year
Venture capital fund-raising hit a 15-year low last quarter, according to data released this morning by the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters (publisher of peHUB). Just 17 U.S.-based funds raised $1.6 billion, which is the puniest display since Q3 1994 -- when 17 funds raised $938 million. I guess VCs could take a bit of solice that the most recent batch raised more capital per fund than did the 1994 crew, but that really would be damning with faint praise.
- Week in deals, Oct. 5, 2009
A summary of North American tech companies and other businesses that raised venture financing in the past week
- Renewable chemical company LS9 raises $25M
VCs are expressing a renewed interest in renewable fuel companies, especially those that can repurpose their efforts toward high-value chemical production
- Venture Capital Is Not A Road To Riches
But you already knew that, didn't you? Only five people on Forbes' list of 400 Richest Americans this year are venture capitalists. If you don't count the ones that also made money elsewhere -- Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates, and Carl Edwin Berg, who built a commercial real estate business with John Sobrato in Silicon Valley -- there are only three. John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins slid down this year's list -- his net worth dropped to $1 billion from $1.6 billion so he's number 346. Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures slid off -- last year he was worth $1.4 billion, but his net worth must have dropped to below $900 million, which is this year's bottom. (A lot of people lost money in the global financial crisis, but maybe Khosla's been investing his money in clean tech companies.) On the other hand, two venture capitalists made the list who didn't last year, maybe because the bottom is $400 million lower.
- Caution in Cleantech
Four major investors say they are still investing in green technology, but they have set the bar higher