Rajesh Swaminathan

Rajesh is a Partner at Khosla Ventures, and brings with him two decades of experience assisting and investing in deeptech & cleantech startups. At Khosla Ventures, he manages deeptech investments across Mining, H2, Geothermal, Solar, Storage, Industrial Decarbonization, Plastics, Advanced Manufacturing, Foodtech and Healthcare. Rajesh is excited about the power of materials science innovations to make a significant impact in the societal infrastructure. Before joining Khosla Ventures, Rajesh served as the Head of Applied Ventures LLC, the Venture Capital arm of Applied Materials (AMAT) and at Third Point Ventures. At Applied Ventures, Rajesh managed a portfolio of 85 deeptech startups. Previously, at Lucent’s Bell Labs, he drove the technical assessments & partnerships with several Optical, MEMS, RF startups, and led DFR programs for the successful deployment of Lucent’s 10Gb/s and 40Gb/s telecommunication systems. While pursuing his MBA at Harvard Business School, he worked at Deutsche Bank’s cleantech banking team, and also worked with Khosla Ventures. Rajesh pursued an M.S. from the University of Maryland at College Park, and received his Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras where he was awarded the Shankar Dayal Sharma (President of India) Medal for overall excellence.