Khosla Ventures related stories
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Khosla raising two fundsCalPERS appears to remain anchor LP
- peHUB Wire: Monday, July 27, 2009
Monday Mouth-Off
- CalPERS' Performance Seriously Nosedives: "About What We Expected," Says CIO
Yeesh. The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) has had one rough year. According to newly-released information, assets under management at the nation's largest public pension dropped a breathtaking 23.4% between June 30, 2008 and June 30, 2009 -- its steepest-ever year-over-year decline. Moreover, its private equity portfolio lost 31.4% of its value, with a value of $23 billion through March 31 (PE performance is a laggard). In a statement, CalPERS' new(ish) chief investment officer Joe Dear called the results unsurprising. "It is about what we expected given the collapse of markets across the globe,” he said. “The good news is we have the opportunity to capture future returns because of our long-term investment horizon. The System has
- Vinod Khosla: One Fund Down, One to Go
Last fall, we reported that Vinod Khosla was in talks with CalPERS to raise up to $640 million to help finance his predilection for capital-intensive clean technologies. Tonight, Forbes reports http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/20/khosla-venture-capital-intelligent-technology-khosla.html that Khosla is about to announce not one but two new funds backed by outside investors, including a $250 million number for early-stage investments and a $750 million fund for later-stage deals. According to the magazine, one fund has closed already and the other will be finalized soon, possibly within days. Khosla, the Sun Microsystems co-founder, superstar venture capitalist and, in recent years, alternative energy advocate, has been investing out of his own pocket since forming Khosla Ventures in 2004. The firm has backed roughly 80 companies across a range of stages, most in clean tech.
- Andreessen Horowitz Closes on $300 Million Venture Fund
Serial entrepreneur Marc Andreessen and his longtime investing partner Ben Horowitz have closed on a $300 million venture fund that aims to invest in mostly seed-stage deals, mostly in Silicon valley, and that will be focused on “anything based on computers,” Andreessen told peHUB. The eponymously named Andreessen Horowitz fund, whose only GPs are Andreessen and Horowitz, will not invest in “cleantech, energy, biotech, life sciences, nanotech, rocket ships, electric cars or space elevators,” said Andreessen. Instead, he and Horowitz will be seeking out the most interesting opportunities in “consumer Internet or what we call business Internet: software as a service and related things [and] cloud computing.” Andreessen added that the pair
Khosla Caps on CrowWhat do eco-bikinis, kangaroo farms and hydrogen cars have in common?
Left OutStartups developing applications for mobile and social networking platforms are finding success quickly, often without help (or money) from VCs.
- Paul Allen Jumps Back in Founder's Seat with Software Startup Xiant
Billionaire Paul Allen hasn’t an easy month. Most notably, Allen, who famously invested upwards of $7 billion for a 52% stake in now-bankrupt Charter Communications, sold nearly all of his Class A common stock holdings in the company -- 28.5 million shares -- for a grand total of $996 last week, according to an SEC filing. (Analysts are still puzzling http://www.multichannel.com/article/295332-Allen_Dumps_Charter_Stock.php over why he bothered.) No sense dwelling on that silly matter, though! That seems to be the message coming from Allen’s camp, which today released the news that Allen is both funding and has founded a Seattle email software startup called Xiant (which apparently began life as Allen’s personal email sorting system). Xiant's software, which is available for free download here http://www.xiant.com/TemplateDownloads.aspx?contentId=3 enters a crowded field of startups that promise to make life easier for Outlook users. Just one example of another young company with a meaningful head start is Xobni http://www.xobni.com/ which began life as a Y Combinator startup and whose email plug-in has
- Week in deals, June 22, 2009
Summary of tech companies and other businesses that raised financing in North America in the past week
- BOKU Raises $13 Million
BOKU Inc., a San Francisco-based provider of a payment service for those making purchases of digital and virtual goods with their mobile phones, has raised $13 million in VC funding. Benchmark Capital led the round, and was joined by Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures.