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As NFL franchise valuations surge—highlighted by the Seattle Seahawks' recent $9.6 billion sale to a group led by Vinod Khosla—the Green Bay Packers' unique community-owned structure is being spotlighted as an alternative to billionaire and private-equity control. The Packers remain the NFL's only publicly owned team, with no single owner able to sell the franchise for personal profit.
Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla told TechCrunch he is backing Wajo, a personal AI agent startup founded by former Google and DeepMind engineer Shivani Poddar, arguing it is more trustworthy than rivals like Meta's Muse and Instinct. Wajo's agent, called Fo, works across iMessage and WhatsApp, organizes tasks into categories such as scheduling and gifting, can call businesses on a user's behalf, hire humans for tasks, and issue a virtual credit card to make payments without revealing personal details.
Menlo Ventures announced a significant investment in AI startup Factory, which was part of its latest funding round at a $5 billion valuation. This comes shortly after Factory’s CEO publicly accused an investor of misconduct, leading to a high-profile industry dispute involving Vinod Khosla, whose firm invests in both Factory and its rival Cognition. Menlo’s support appears to challenge Khosla’s negative characterization of Factory’s stability and prospects.
Khosla Ventures has recruited Tal Broda, who spent two years at OpenAI, to work on infrastructure investing. Broda will provide technical expertise to companies in Khosla's early-stage startup portfolio.
Mazama Energy closed an oversubscribed $135 million Series B round led by Centaurus Capital and Doerr Capital, with Vinod Khosla among earlier backers. The funds will support horizontal drilling into super-hot rock formations in Oregon, where each well could generate up to 15 megawatts, and the company now estimates the site could ultimately yield 10 gigawatts of power, double last year's projection.
AI coding startup Factory has raised $200 million in new funding, pushing its valuation past $5 billion—more than triple its previous mark. Investors in the round include Khosla Ventures, Blackstone and Marc Benioff.
Planted, a startup that uses digital-twin software and robots to redesign and build solar farms, has raised $31.8 million led by Piva Capital and RA Capital Management Planetary Health, with backing from Google, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Gigascale Capital, and Khosla Ventures. The company's technology helped one St. Louis-area project cut land use by 40% while producing the same power output, resolving a zoning dispute that had stalled the development.
Partner Keith Rabois revealed at TechCrunch's StrictlyVC event that Khosla Ventures is setting up its first-ever satellite office, located on 14th Street in New York, with an expected fall opening. The firm currently has no presence even in San Francisco, making this a significant shift for the Menlo Park-based investor.
A paper published in JAMA this month, authored by bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, argues that AI is already surpassing physicians at core clinical tasks like gathering patient information, diagnosing conditions, and managing chronic disease, and predicts fully AI-run care will soon beat human-only or hybrid care. American Medical Association CEO John Whyte pushed back, telling Wired that many cited studies relied on simulations rather than blinded trials and that contradictory evidence, including a Nature study on patients struggling to use chatbots, undermines the paper's conclusions.
TechCrunch's evening event series StrictlyVC is holding its first New York gathering in two years, set for September 10 in the West Village. The lineup includes investor Keith Rabois discussing venture trends and his early OpenAI investment, plus a conversation between Collaborative Fund's Craig Shapiro and D.C. United CEO Jason Levien on sports as a business investment, with Tristan Walker also joining discussions on AI and community.
US-based Berry Street has combined with Khosla Ventures-backed Indian startup Healthify, forming a single company that will operate as Berry Street in the US and Healthify elsewhere, including India. Terms were not disclosed. Founders Noah Kotlove and Tushar Vashisht will serve as co-CEOs, uniting Berry Street's insurance-covered GLP-1 clinic network with Healthify's AI-driven coaching platform.