CalPERS commits $60M to Khosla’s new seed fund
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System announced today that it has committed $60 million dollars to Khosla Ventures for its new seed-stage fund. The firm, based in Menlo Park, Calif., and founded by former Kleiner Perkins higher-up Vinod Khosla, has invested in 70 early and late-stage companies to date with a strong focus on the cleantech area — including the solar, energy efficiency, battery and biofuel spaces. It has raised $250 million for its seed fund to date.
A few other items pop out in the document CalPERS has provided explaining the investment. Chief among them is the appearance of Pierre Lamond, a recent addition to the Khosla team. He joined this year following his departure from Sequoia Capital, where he had served as partner since 1981. In his former role, he focused on investments in systems software and is only now branching into cleantech.
Sequoia had very publicly rejected investments from public institutions so that they weren’t required to jump through public disclosure hoops. For example, it kicked out the University of California as an investor several years back. So it’s somewhat ironic to see Lamond’s name turn up in documents related to a CalPERS investment. Looks like his new fund needs public money after all.
Here’s a link to the full PDF document CalPERS provided on the deal. No word yet on how Khosla plans to invest the money in its new fund. It should be interesting to see what a crack team of former Kleiner and Sequoia heavies chooses to back.
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About the Author, Camille Ricketts
Camille is the lead writer for GreenBeat. She came to VentureBeat from Google where she worked on its traditional platforms team, particularly in TV. Before that, she was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in New York and London. Follow her on Twitter at @camillericketts, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.
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