Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Vinod Khosla

Ness Computing Raises $5 Million for Likeness.com Subjective Search

Riley Kennysmith — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 16:41:59 +0000

Ness Computing has been working on creating a selective search engine, and have raised $5 million in funding. The investors include Vinod Khosla and Ramy Adeeb (of Khosla Ventures), Alsop Louie Partners, Bullpen Capital and a co-founder of Palantir Technologies, as well as angel investors. TechCrunch reports that the search engine will be located at likeness.com, and combines data from your online likes with a search engine to provide a search designed with your preferences in mind. Corey Reese, CEO of Ness, explains that while Google organized data, likeness.com is about “organizing opportunities.”

Meebo Raises $25 Million In Funding Led By Khosla

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 07:16:53 +0000

Web based instant messaging service Meebo.com has raised $25 million in funding. Khosla Ventures was the lead investor in Meebo and Khosla partner Gideon Yu will become a board observer.

This is Meebo’s Series D round of funding. Sequoia Capital and DFJ also participated in this round. This brings Meebo’s total round of funding to $60 million.

Vinod Khosla said that he is interested in how Meebo is making websites more social through their web-based toolbar. Meebo is introduced a new website check-in service on the toolbar soon.

Meebo makes money through ad-sharing deals with publishers. About 87% of their advertising partners in 2009 had returned in 2010. The Meebo Bar also has a 1% click-through rate.

[AllThingsD]

Michigan Auto Co. EcoMotors Company Receives $23.5M From Bill Gates and Khosla Ventures

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 03:49:09 +0000

EcoMotors International has raised $23.5 million from Menlo Park based VC firm Khosla Ventures founded by Vinod Khosla and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. This new round of funding will allow EcoMotors to complete the engineering and testing of the Opoc engine.

The Opoc engine is 50% more fuel-efficient than conventional car engines with a similar output and is half the weight and size. Opoc costs less to manufacture too. “EcoMotors has developed a promising technology that could help reduce levels of greenhouse gas emissions in a low-cost, globally relevant way,” said Bill Gates.

[Detroit News]

Khosla Ventures Raises $1.1 Billion For 2 New Funds

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:01:53 +0000

Vinod Khosla, the founder of Khosla Ventures and co-founder of Sun Microsystems has raised $1.1 billion for his venture firm. About $800 million will be going to Khosla Ventures III and $275 million will go to a new seed fund.

Altogether $1.1 billion is the largest that a venture firm has raised in the last 10 years. This is also the first time that Khosla Ventures raised money externally. One of the biggest partners in this round of funding is CALPERS (the California state employees retirement fund).

The previous rounds of Khosla Ventures were provided by Vinod Khosla himself. Khosla founded the venture firm in 2004 and now the company has 8 partners. Gideon Yu was recently hired as a General Partner at Khosla. Before that he was the CFO of Facebook.

Khosla Ventures Hires Gideon Yu

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 05:09:48 +0000

Gideon Yu is the former chief financial officer at Facebook. In late March, Yu had suddenly quit and it was uncertain where he was headed to next. According to a source with TechCrunch, Yu has joined Khosla Ventures as a General Partner.

Yu was previously an SVP in Finance and Yahoo! and he was also the former CFO of YouTube. Before joining Khosla, Yu worked for a short while at Sequoia Capital. He was one of the main reasons why Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion.

Khosla recently raised $1 billion in a fund to invest in various startups in the mobile, Internet, science, and clean-tech sectors.

Oracle Buys Sun Microsystems For $7.4 Billion; Now Owns MySQL and Java

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:33:09 +0000

After IBM recently backed out of making a deal with Sun, Oracle stepped up to the plate and bought out the Java-making company for an astonishing $7.4 billion. IBM’s offer was about $6.5 billion.

This will give Oracle the opportunity to become even more competitive against IT firms such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, SAP, etc. Sun also holds the assets to two of the most impressive pieces of software Java and MySQL.

Sun Microsystems bought MySQL for $1 billion in January 2008.

“To me, this proposed acquisition totally redefines the industry,” wrote Sun President and CEO Jonathan I. Schwartz in an e-mail to Sun employees. “Let me assure you [Oracle is] single minded in [its] focus on the one asset that doesn’t appear in our financial statements: our people.”

Oracle will be paying $9.50 per share for common stock in Sun, but the agreement is subject to the Justice Department’s approval. Sun was founded by Vinod Khosla, Andy Bechtolsheim, and Scott McNealy. Oracle was co-founded by Lawrence (Larry) Ellison.

“Java is the single most important software we’ve ever acquired,” stated Ellison in a conference call. “With the acquisition of Sun, Oracle is now able to make all of the pieces of the technology stack fit together and work well.”