Word: khosla
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...fastest way to start a fistfight among environmentalists is to bring up the topic of biofuels - plant-based liquid fuels like ethanol that could potentially take the place of petroleum. Biofuel revolutionaries - like Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla - see plant power as a way to break America's dependence on foreign oil, and produce auto fuel that doesn't kill the climate. Opponents dismiss biofuels - most of which are currently distilled from crops like corn and sugar cane - as a blind alley, one that drives up food prices without saving the earth...
...difficult than distilling it from corn, or better, sugar cane. Both the Department of Energy (DoE) and private companies like Broomfield, Colo.-based Range Fuels are developing the technology to commercialize cellulosic ethanol, but that day might still be years away. "We're doing serious technological innovation on this," Khosla told TIME recently. "Oil is a big market, and there will be breakthroughs...
...focused venture-capital firm Nth Power, which also has invested in Imperium Renewables. Like Tobias, Silicon Valley stalwarts who helped power the IT revolution see clean tech as an investment opportunity that could have no ceiling - and that comes with the side benefit of potentially saving the world. Vinod Khosla, famous for being a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, has put massive bets on biofuels, while his former partners at leading venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers (Kleiner Perkins) have belatedly followed in a big way, investing more than $270 million in the green-tech sector and hiring Nobel...
...angling to become green Googles. In turn, green venture capital in the U.S. is projected to rise to $18 billion by 2010, according to Nicholas Parker of the research group Cleantech Network. "There are huge problems facing us, and the only way to solve them is through innovation," says Khosla. "That's what venture capital does best...
...single venture capitalist may be more responsible for that shift than Khosla, who formed Khosla Ventures in 2004 in part because his Kleiner Perkins partners were still hesitant to dive into clean tech. Khosla had no such fears, and he has emerged as a clean-tech evangelist. "By 2000, I felt that software and other businesses were reaching a dead end," he says. "But energy was an area where there were large markets that could benefit from innovation." Khosla hasn't held back - in the first nine months of 2007, Khosla Ventures participated in 14 deals worth nearly $70 million...