Khosla Ventures Founder Vinod Khosla Talks AI Development

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

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Sam Altman (0:13)

We have a choice in front of us.

AI can either be more like a new renaissance of creativity and discovery or more like a new industrial revolution of upheaval and disarray. As AI becomes more capable, people must remain at the center of AI decision-making. Alignment is not an abstract research question. It is the work of ensuring that these systems reliably remain under human control, reflect human values, and help people guide the next stages of development.

SPEAKER_3 (0:41)

OpenAI, Sam Altman, speaking at the United Nations yesterday. This morning, President Trump posting that AI will be a big topic of conversation with China and that both countries want to quote, leave it exactly where it is. Let's bring in an early investor of OpenAI, Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, a veteran in all things tech and investing. Vinod, great to have you in. And look, we have so much to discuss today, but if we could just start with that, because I have to say, you've been really prescient on this. As early as 2023, you were basically saying, the US can't slow down because we have this concern with what's happening in China. Your man, Sam Altman, has said he's open to the idea of maybe slowing things down for the name of safety. I wonder what conversations you've had with him and how that is developing at this moment.

Vinod Khosla (1:26)

Going into specific conversations, I might diverge a little.

SPEAKER_3 (1:30)

Sure.

Vinod Khosla (1:30)

I think much more dangerous than AI, is AI in the hands of our nation state adversaries. We should be very clear that's way more dangerous when there's bad intent behind it than if it's on its own.

SPEAKER_5 (1:49)

Can I jump in on that because this seems to be where the problem is going to be going to 2030 We're off on a good start with sort of the model front, but the power problem here. Now, China put up about five times as much power as we did in 2025 They have this 60 gigawatt dam coming in, which is just a massive, impressive project. Are we going to win on the models and maybe even the governance, but lose in the power story eventually?

Vinod Khosla (2:12)

Well, permitting and other delays are clearly slowing us down. But I do think it doesn't hurt the rate of model development. It does hurt the rate of deployment of models for inferencing.

I'm less concerned about power in the 30s, early 30s and beyond, than I am today because the power demand was growing very, very slowly. In fact, slightly less than GDP the last 20 years, and it surprised everybody. It shouldn't have been a surprise. We invested in Commonwealth Fusion in 2018 The same year we invested in OpenAI, that was 2018 But it takes 10 years to develop a technology, and I'm pretty certain it will be, fusion will come out very well, and we have new sources. Super hot geothermal like Mazama will come out very, very quickly. My bet is by 2028 and so.

So there are alternatives. We have new investment in a company called Subcritical. You'll hear more about soon. So there are alternatives coming, but power plants take a while to build, and they respond slowly. So there is a short-term problem, and that'll be solved with pricing.

SPEAKER_3 (3:29)

Does that short-term problem, to Mike's point, though, make us all the more vulnerable for our adversaries to speed up ahead of us? If what's growing in the United States, at least for now, is this NIMBYism and this pushback to data centers getting constructed?

Vinod Khosla (3:42)

Well, this is one of the places I agree with President Trump on, is we need to push ahead for development of AI and power.

I think in the end, it will help the country tremendously. But there is a short-term mismatch.

SPEAKER_3 (3:55)

What do you do about that, Vinod?

Vinod Khosla (3:57)

I think some states can take the lead in here and not be subject to as much NIMBYism. They have less population density. I do think the data center providers should subsidize rates where they are.

That's very easy to do because they have room in the economics to do that.

SPEAKER_5 (4:18)

I'm a big fan of this fourth turning concept. Every 60, 80 years, you get a big pivot in the politics. Now, you've been talking about taxing capital, and that's important with AI taking maybe more jobs, disrupting industry. Maybe there's a transition period where we do create more jobs, and then we have to go through this kind of disruptive period. Now, can you think about sort of how the political argument can be made to the populace that this is an appropriate thing? We just had tax cuts that seemed very popular on one side of the aisle, and then we have maybe more extreme views than the other that won't be adopted by the center.