Khosla Ventures has raised $405 million for OpenAI, according to a filing with regulators.
Based on the filing alone, Khosla’s stake in the ChatGPT maker appears to be at least 6% of the $6.6 billion the company closed on last week. However, this does not mean Khosla has committed significant capital to the round. Most or all of the $405 million was raised from other investors through a special purpose vehicle (SPV).
SPVs are used when a company does not have enough capital to fill a round or offers an allocation to others who have sufficient exposure to the company and require equity.
Khosla Ventures declined to comment, so the terms of its participation in OpenAI’s last round, which valued the company at $157 billion, are unknown. Either way, OpenAI has been good for Khosla Ventures, which invested $50 million in the company in 2019. What The Information later reported was a 5% ownership. OpenAI’s valuation at the time was not publicly known, but it was likely well below the $29 billion valuation OpenAI was said to have earned in 2023, when Microsoft invested $10 billion.
