Samir Kaul
Samir is a Founding Partner and Managing Director at Khosla Ventures, where his interests lie in AI, advanced technology, health, sustainability and food. He led the firm’s investments in multiple companies that have had successful exits via IPOs or acquisitions including Guardant Health (NAS: GH), Nutanix (NAS: NTNX), Oscar (NYS: OSCR), Quantumscape (NYS: QS), Granular (DuPont), SLD (Kyocera), NanoH2O (LG Chem), Iora Health (One Medical) and Raxium (Google). Additionally, he has led investments in Rhoda, Reevo, Primer, Traba, Impossible Foods, Mainspring, Connie Health, Split Pay, Hook, Varda Space Industries, Rightway Health, Mirvie and Ultima Genomics, among others.
Previously, Samir spent five years at Flagship Ventures, where he started and invested in early-stage biotech companies. While there, he helped co-found Helicos BioSciences with Stanford’s Stan Lapidus and Steve Quake, a company that was a leader in developing single-molecule sequencing instruments to revolutionize personalized medicine. He was also the founding CEO of Codon Devices, for which he raised Series A financing, built the technical and advisory teams, and booked significant revenue in the company’s first year of operation. His other investments include Epitome (Millipore), LS9 (Renewable Energy Group), and Morphotek (Eisai).
Earlier in his career, Samir led the Arabidopsis Genome Initiative at Craig Venter’s Institute for Genomic Research. He published seven peer-reviewed papers in genomics, including a landmark Nature paper detailing the first complete genome of a flowering plant (Arabidopsis thaliana, 2000)—a breakthrough that reshaped plant biology.
Active in philanthropy, Samir is a current board member and chair of the Development Committee of UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and sits on the board of the Michael J. Fox Foundation. He was a longtime member of the Nominating and Leadership Committees of the Tipping Point Community, a leading non-profit focused on eradicating poverty in the Bay Area and served on the board of trustees for the US Ski and Snowboard Association.