The family of Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has agreed to purchase the Seattle Seahawks for $9.6 billion, pending approval from NFL owners, according to a league memo sent to teams and obtained by ESPN. The memo states Neeru Khosla will serve as the controlling owner and that their son, Neal, “is expected to have a significant leadership role in the ownership group.”
Vinod Khosla, 71, is a longtime figure in technology investing. He was an early investor in Google and his firm, Khosla Ventures, made one of the largest early bets on OpenAI, buying a 5% stake in 2019 for $50 million; Forbes estimated that stake was worth $852 billion in March. Khosla Ventures has also backed companies including DoorDash, Instacart and Impossible Foods. Earlier this year Khosla was ranked No. 10 on Forbes’ list of America’s Greatest Innovators.
Khosla was born in India in 1955 and grew up the son of an army officer. His biography on the Khosla Ventures website notes he read about Intel at 16 and decided to pursue technology. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, moved to the United States in 1976 on a scholarship to Carnegie Mellon University for a master’s in biomedical engineering, and later attended Stanford Business School after an initial rejection. He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982, where he hired future Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and spent about two decades at Kleiner Perkins before launching Khosla Ventures in 2004 with a focus on AI and green technology.
Vinod and Neeru Khosla met in high school in India and now have four children. The league memo obtained by ESPN identifies Neal Khosla as expected to play a prominent role in the ownership group alongside Neeru Khosla as controlling owner.
Khosla remains a visible presence in public life, conducting interviews and maintaining an active X account. He is close to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and frequently posts about the company. He has been critical of President Donald Trump’s policies on immigration and climate change, engaged in online disagreements with Elon Musk, and has said he agrees with Trump that the U.S. must be competitive with China in AI. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has called him “the preeminent venture capitalist of our time,” and Khosla Ventures’ website says the firm prefers “brutal honesty to hypocritical politeness.”
