New Delhi: An Indian-American billionaire and venture capitalist, Vinod Khosla, is set to become the new owner of the National Football League’s Seattle Seahawks franchise. Khosla’s family finalised the deal last week, agreeing to pay a record $9.6 billion for the team.
Seattle Seahawk, in a statement on 12 July, announced that the Estate of Paul G Allen, which has owned the franchise since 1997, had reached a formal sale agreement with a group led by the Khosla family. “The Khosla family will become the team’s controlling owner,” the statement read.
The franchise didn’t disclose the terms of the agreement, but ESPN reported, quoting sources, that Seattle Seahawk is being sold for $9.612 billion, making it the most expensive NFL franchise sale ever.
“We are honored to be entrusted as the next stewards of the Seattle Seahawks. We look forward to building on the winning legacy Paul Allen created and to earning the trust of the Seahawks organization and fans everywhere,” Vinod Khosla said, on behalf of his family.
Seattle Seahawks, the defending Super Bowl champions, was bought by Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul G Allen from Ken Behring for $194 million in 1997. After his death in 2018, his sister, Jody, took over the franchise.
NBC Sports reported that Vinod Khosla’s wife, Neeru, will be the controlling owner of Seattle Seahawks while their son, Neal, is “expected to have a significant leadership role in the ownership group.”
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Who is Vinod Khosla?
Vinod Khosla is the founder and managing director of Khosla Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm. Forbes reported that he has a current net worth of $13.7 billion and ranks 254 on Forbes’ real-time list of world’s richest people.
Khosla started the firm in 2004 to invest in experimental and science-based technologies that “could be both profitable and impactful”. It funds biomedicine and robotics, and became the first venture capital firm in 2019 to invest in OpenAI.
Born in a Punjabi family in Pune, Maharashtra, Khosla studied electrical engineering at IIT Delhi and also tried running a business, before migrating to the US. He then did his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1980 and co-founded the computer hardware company Sun Microsystems in 1982, which was acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2010.
On his LinkedIn page, Khosla describes himself as a “technology optimist” who believes that “technology can address our most pressing challenges, including climate change and resource scarcity”.