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Vinod Khosla: freeing humanity from “servitude to survival”

WithVinod Khosla

Hosted byAuren Hoffman

Vinod Khosla is one of the most successful and contrarian investors alive, first at Kleiner Perkins and then at Khosla Ventures, where he wrote the first institutional check into OpenAI. Forbes ranked him #1 on its 2026 Midas List. Vinod previously co-founded Sun Microsystems and took it from zero to a billion dollars in sales in five years.
In this episode of Summation, Vinod and Auren discuss:

• Why 40 years of radical innovation has come from startups, not big companies
• Why he has never once calculated an IRR, including on OpenAI
• Why 70-80% of VCs add negative value, and what "brutal honesty over hypocritical politeness" looks like in a board meeting
• AI capable of doing 80% of jobs, and how to protect the people instead of the jobs
• Why he changed his mind on open source AI, and why "follow your passion" is finally good advice

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Vinod Khosla on X at @vkhosla