Khosla Ventures
Vinod Khosla, a lion of IT venture capital investing in his years at industry heavyweight Kleiner Perkins, has turned his attention to energy - specifically, to coming up with alternative fuels to replace environmentally unfriendly petroleum-based products. Together with entrepreneur-turned-VC Samir Kaul, he's plunking down cash (he won't say how much, but it's a safe bet that it's in the tens of millions) on a slew of green-focused startups. Khosla Ventures' beneficiaries include Range Fuels andMascoma - headed by Mitch Mandich and Bruce Jamerson, respectively - both of which plan to produce ethanol from plant products other than corn; Ausra, a solarpower company chaired by David Mills and run by president John O'Donnell; and Transonic Combustion, run by husbandand wife Mike and Charity Cheiky, which is working, in ultra-top-secret stealth mode, on radically more efficient fuel injection technology. --A.L.
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