# Khosla Ventures, first backer of OpenAI, is raising up to $5.5bn > Source: > Published: 2026-07-23 13:34:05+00:00 Vinod Khosla likes to be early. His firm was the first outside investor in OpenAI, back when that was a strange thing to be. Now Khosla Ventures is raising money to do it again, at a scale it has never tried. The firm is in talks to gather as much as $5.5bn across a new set of funds, [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-23/khosla-ventures-in-talks-to-raise-5-5-billion-in-new-funds) reported. People familiar with the private talks described the plans. That would be its largest raise in two decades. Its last set of funds, closed a year ago, came to around $4bn. Most of the money would go where Khosla likes it: early. The plan floats about $1bn for seed-stage startups and roughly $2bn for slightly older ones. A further $2.5bn would form an “opportunity” fund for more mature companies. Those are the ones now raising sums that once sounded absurd. A spokesperson declined to comment, and the figures could still move. The number is big, but the pattern is the story. Firms that got into [OpenAI or Anthropic](https://thenextweb.com/news/anthropic-1-2-trillion-secondary-valuation-openai) early are now raising the biggest funds of their lives. Paper gains have emboldened them, and they are racing to repeat the trick. ## A stampede of record funds The comparisons pile up. Last month [Menlo Ventures](https://thenextweb.com/news/menlo-ventures-3bn-anthropic-ai-funds) closed a record $3bn, and it sits on a roughly $14bn stake in Anthropic. Peter Thiel’s [Founders Fund](https://thenextweb.com/news/founders-fund-spacex-50-billion-windfall) recently raised $6bn, its largest ever. Earlier this year [Sequoia](https://thenextweb.com/news/sable-aidan-ai-employee-sequoia-45-million) gathered about $7bn. Each is a wager that the AI boom still has room to run, as [Outlook Business](https://www.outlookbusiness.com/deeptech/early-openai-backer-khosla-ventures-eyes-record-55-bn-fundraise-for-tech-startups) noted. Khosla’s own bets sketch the thesis. Beyond OpenAI, the firm seeded [Cognition](https://thenextweb.com/news/scaled-cognition-100m-khosla-reliable-ai), an AI coding startup, and Sakana AI, which builds a language model for Japan. It also backed Physical Intelligence, which trains models for robots. The idea is that the next OpenAI is already somewhere in that list. ## The man, not the football team There was one other question on a recent fundraising call. Khosla had just led an investor group to buy the Seattle Seahawks for $9.6bn. That price would set a National Football League record. On the call he assured investors he has no plans to run the team. He stays devoted to venture capital, [Startup Fortune](https://startupfortune.com/khosla-ventures-is-in-talks-to-raise-55-billion-as-vinod-khosla-doubles-down-on-ai/) reported. That leaves the real question hanging over the raise. Can a firm catch the same lightning twice? Or is $5.5bn what the top of a market looks like? ## Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.