Vinod Khosla is trying to change Elon Musk’s mind on Trump, the economy and climate

Zero: The Climate Race

Bloomberg

Technology, Business, Science

4.7 • 219 Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As Republican and Democratic canvassers make their final push to get out the US vote, the famed tech investor Vinod Khosla has been making the case for Vice President Kamala Harris with a very specific audience in mind: Elon Musk. On the social media platform owned by his fellow billionaire, Khosla has pressed the case in a series of X posts that former President Donald Trump is the wrong candidate for the future of the planet. Although Khosla is a former Republican, he says in an interview that he will be voting for Harris. But he doesn’t expect tech investors to see much fallout no matter who wins. “I don't think there'll be any difference in policy between the two when it comes to tech.”

Explore further:

Past episode with Liam Denning on whether Tesla is on the road to irrelevance
Past episode with Jen Dlouhy about how Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s climate plans differ
Past episode with Bill Gates about why he is investing into nuclear power

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. This episode was mixed by Blake Maples. Special thanks to Siobhan Wagner, Jessica Beck, Ethan Steinberg, Monique Mulima, Angel Recio, Michelle Ma and Biz Carson. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Zero. I am Akshadrati. This week, the billionaire taking on Elon Musk.
0:06.0	Vinod Kossela is the definition of a Silicon Valley veteran.
0:23.7	In the 1980s, he started Sun Microsystems, which was later acquired by Oracle in 2010 for $7.4
0:30.6	billion.
0:32.1	And in the decades since, his influence in the tech world has only grown.
0:37.0	After his stint at Sun, he became an investor starting with Kleiner Perkins.
0:41.5	In 2004, he founded Kossla Ventures, which has backed big tech success stories like DoorDash,
0:48.3	Stripe and Instacart.
0:50.8	Kosla Ventures now has $15 billion in assets under management, including more than 400 companies in the portfolio.
1:00.0	Things like plant-based burger replacement company Impossible Foods and Lanzatek, which turns pollution into sustainable fuel.
1:10.0	At the moment, he's especially focused on artificial intelligence. which turns pollution into sustainable fuel.
1:15.3	At the moment, he's especially focused on artificial intelligence.
1:17.0	And it's an obsession.
1:21.7	He shares with another tech billionaire founder, Elon Musk.
1:30.2	Recently, Winod and Elon have been locked in a pointed debate on X, not just about AI, but also things like beachfront property and immigration, and the big one, politics.
1:35.6	But just weeks to go till the US election, I wanted to ask Winod what he thinks the titans of
1:41.1	the tech industry get right and wrong about politics and climate change.
1:46.6	I had fun in this conversation, and as you'll hear, Winod did too.
1:51.0	He also had strong opinions.
2:05.8	Well, Welcome to the show, Winod.
2:07.3	Great to be here.
2:10.7	Now, you've seen it all in the climate tech space.
	...

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