Longtime startup investor Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, will soon add an exclusive asset to his portfolio: a National Football League franchise.
At an Aug. 26 press conference NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced that the other NFL owners had unanimously voted to approve the sale of the Seattle Seahawks to an investment group led by Khosla and his family for $9.61 billion.
Seattle is the defending Super Bowl champion and the deal is a record for an NFL franchise. Khosla was a minority owner in the Seahawks’ rival San Francisco 49ers and will relinquish that stake as part of the deal.
Khosla, who cofounded Sun Microsystems, has been a top venture capital investor in the life sciences tools and diagnostics space with Khosla Ventures, featuring investments in Guardant Health, Ultima Genomics, Karius Diagnostics, Apton Biosystems (acquired by Pacific Biosciences in 2023), Opentrons, Volta Labs, Earli, Viome Life Sciences, Scipher Medicine, and others. Khosla Ventures has also made investments in Silicon Valley tech companies such as OpenAI, Doordash, Instacart, and Stripe.
As reported by Brady Henderson of ESPN.com, the deal is expected to close before the start of the upcoming NFL season opener on Sept. 9.
Conflict of interest disclosure: The Han family are also minority owners in an NFL franchise. Go Packers!