Vinod Khosla: checked claims

Scores by kind of claim

Each kind of claim is scored on its own, out of 100: the share that held up, with the range it likely falls in. Fewer resolved claims give a wider range.

Factual claims

Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?

72 64 80

Medium confidence, 43 factual claims resolved. From 11 documents, 2007 to 2024; 19 documents sampled from 31 candidates found.

Not scored: 44 unresolvable, 21 checkable only against their own records.

See the factual claims
Predictions

Statements about events outside the person's control, checked once they fell due: did they come true?

58 40 75

Low confidence, 9 predictions resolved. From 2 documents, 2007 to 2010; 19 documents sampled from 31 candidates found.

Not scored: 46 unresolvable, 1 checkable only against their own records. 15 more fall due later.
Does not yet allow for how likely each prediction was when made.

See the predictions

All types combined: 70 (likely 62 to 77, high confidence), from 52 claims: 43 factual claims, 9 predictions. It mixes kinds of claim in different proportions for different people, so compare people kind by kind.

Vinod Khosla's claims

52 claims

52 claims, sorted by newest said. Choose a claim to read it in full.
Verdict	Kind	Said	Claim	Topic
Mostly true	Factual	9 Apr 2024	Andy Grove was an immigrant who founded a cutting-edge technology company in America. Factual · 9 Apr 2024	Technology
Mostly true	Factual	9 Apr 2024	Vinod Khosla calls himself a "venture assistant", which used to annoy his former colleague John Doerr. Factual · 9 Apr 2024	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Factual	9 Apr 2024	Khosla read about Andy Grove at Intel in magazines as a youth in India and was inspired by his story, and has said so publicly before. Factual · 9 Apr 2024	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Factual	14 Dec 2023	Over two decades before December 2023, Khosla figured AI would force us to rethink what it means to be human. Factual · 14 Dec 2023	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	13 Dec 2023	Autonomous driving in closed systems is now easy to do and to deploy. Factual · 13 Dec 2023	AI capabilities
Mostly true	Factual	5 Dec 2021	People in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump in the last presidential election have been nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19. Factual · 5 Dec 2021	Biosecurity
Mostly true	Factual	20 Oct 2021	GitLab's outcome produced massive financial returns for Khosla Ventures and other investors. Factual · 20 Oct 2021	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	14 Oct 2021	Soon after an earlier point in time, a Lehman analyst predicted Amazon (AMZN) would go bankrupt. Factual · 14 Oct 2021	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Factual	14 Oct 2021	Amazon's stock price declined 90% over the few years following the dot-com era. Factual · 14 Oct 2021	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	29 Sep 2020	Ronald Reagan dropped the FCC requirements for balanced reporting. Factual · 29 Sep 2020	AI policy and governance
Mixed	Factual	6 Sep 2020	In his 2011 "Black Swan Thesis of Energy Transformation" Vinod Khosla called Quantumscape a "quantum-nano-thingamagitit" battery. Factual · 6 Sep 2020	Technology
Mostly true	Factual	5 Sep 2020	Khosla said Fox News had confirmed reporting that contradicted Donald Trump's statements in the preceding day or so. Factual · 5 Sep 2020	Other
Mostly true	Factual	4 Sep 2020	The bradykinin hypothesis for Covid-19 suggests 10-plus potential treatments, many of which are already FDA approved. Factual · 4 Sep 2020	Biosecurity
Resolved true	Factual	24 Feb 2020	OpenAI, a Khosla investment, is pursuing the goal of building artificial general intelligence (transcribed as 'ADR'). Factual · 24 Feb 2020	AI capabilities
Resolved true	Factual	24 Feb 2020	Square's current business was not part of the plan when Khosla Ventures originally invested; it started as a hardware dongle. Factual · 24 Feb 2020	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Factual	13 Jun 2019	Vinod Khosla specifically said earlier that we would have music personalized to each person. Factual · 13 Jun 2019	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	16 May 2019	Rubrik is younger than Cohesity and is growing much faster than Cohesity. Factual · 16 May 2019	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Factual	30 Apr 2019	Most people are not getting access to high-quality behavioral health support. Factual · 30 Apr 2019	Other
Resolved true	Factual	14 Jan 2014	Jonathan Silver, former head of the DOE loan program, expects the program to make money rather than be a subsidy. Factual · 14 Jan 2014	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	14 Jan 2014	There is $51 billion remaining in DOE loan money. Factual · 14 Jan 2014	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	14 Jan 2014	The U.S. Department of Energy Loan Guarantee Program has created 55,000 new cleantech jobs. Factual · 14 Jan 2014	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	14 Jan 2014	A substantial portion of DOE loans is allocated to nuclear energy. Factual · 14 Jan 2014	Economics and markets
Mostly false	Factual	14 Jan 2014	Vinod Khosla has not invested over a billion dollars of his own money into cleantech. Factual · 14 Jan 2014	Their own work or organisation
Mostly true	Factual	14 Jan 2014	Oil prospecting has a failure rate greater than 55 percent. Factual · 14 Jan 2014	Technology
Mostly false	Factual	14 Jan 2014	Weeks before the 60 Minutes program aired, View secured an additional $100 million in private funding to ramp production at its Mississippi manufacturing facility. Factual · 14 Jan 2014	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	14 Jan 2014	The U.S. DOE loan program has a 97% success rate. Factual · 14 Jan 2014	Economics and markets
Mostly false	Factual	14 Jan 2014	Cleantech subsidies are a minuscule fraction of one percent of the fossil-fuel subsidy amounts referred to. Factual · 14 Jan 2014	Economics and markets
Mixed	Factual	7 Dec 2013	Square is possibly the most popular payment system, and when Khosla Ventures backed it everybody told Khosla it would take 10-15 years. Factual · 7 Dec 2013	Their own work or organisation
Resolved true	Factual	9 Sep 2012	Vinod Khosla recently read Ben Austen's WIRED article about Steve Jobs. Factual · 9 Sep 2012	Their own work or organisation
Mostly false	Prediction	23 Dec 2010	The Chevy Volt is expected to ship 40,000 units by 2012. Prediction · 23 Dec 2010	Technology
Resolved true	Factual	23 Dec 2010	Khosla's portfolio is developing a new engine type that is 50 percent more efficient at less cost than today's engines. Factual · 23 Dec 2010	Technology
Resolved false	Prediction	23 Dec 2010	Traditional lithium-ion bulk batteries will almost certainly not be around in 15 years. Prediction · 23 Dec 2010	Technology
Mostly true	Factual	28 Sep 2007	Utilities are currently forced to take the power the subject was discussing (power he said nobody needs at night), which he described as really just a tax. Factual · 28 Sep 2007	AI policy and governance
Mixed	Factual	28 Sep 2007	Oil interests are spreading disinformation, seeding doubts and mounting campaigns against first-generation products like corn ethanol. Factual · 28 Sep 2007	Economics and markets
Mostly true	Factual	28 Sep 2007	Strong government signals in Europe have made a big difference in advancing renewables there. Factual · 28 Sep 2007	AI policy and governance
Mixed	Factual	28 Sep 2007	US corn yields have increased sevenfold since 1920 due to technology and engineering. Factual · 28 Sep 2007	Technology
Mixed	Factual	28 Sep 2007	Oil interests are running massive PR campaigns against ethanol. Factual · 28 Sep 2007	Economics and markets
Resolved true	Prediction	28 Sep 2007	If solar photovoltaics grew 10,000 percent, they would supply about 4 percent of worldwide electricity. Prediction · 28 Sep 2007	Technology
Mostly true	Factual	28 Sep 2007	Geothermal power works extremely well in certain regions. Factual · 28 Sep 2007	Technology
Mostly true	Factual	28 Sep 2007	Khosla said he believed there had been relatively little controversy over cellulosic ethanol, and that most of the controversy had focused on corn ethanol. Factual · 28 Sep 2007	Technology
Resolved true	Factual	28 Sep 2007	Cement is one of the biggest producers of greenhouse gases. Factual · 28 Sep 2007	Technology
Resolved true	Factual	28 Sep 2007	Saudi Arabia, with a smaller population than California, gains or loses a trillion dollars in asset values each time the oil price moves by $4. Factual · 28 Sep 2007	Economics and markets
Mostly false	Factual	28 Sep 2007	The vast majority of scientists will say that these fuels give a 20 to 30 percent carbon reduction. Factual · 28 Sep 2007	Technology
Mostly true	Prediction	28 Sep 2007	Pricing carbon and requiring carbon capture and sequestration would probably add about 2 cents per kilowatt hour to the cost of coal power, depending on the carbon price. Prediction · 28 Sep 2007	Technology
Mostly true	Factual	28 Sep 2007	Khosla said he believed a massive amount of PR money was being funded by various oil interests, including oil companies and the American Petroleum Institute. Factual · 28 Sep 2007	Economics and markets
Resolved false	Prediction	28 Sep 2007	Khosla said he believed 50 million acres of US land could supply all US biofuel needs. Prediction · 28 Sep 2007	Technology
Mostly true	Prediction	28 Sep 2007	Even if Germany switched completely to photovoltaics, climate change's trajectory will not change unless India and China also adopt them. Prediction · 28 Sep 2007	Technology
Resolved true	Prediction	28 Sep 2007	There will be a mix of biofuels in the marketplace. Prediction · 28 Sep 2007	Technology
Resolved true	Prediction	28 Sep 2007	He did not believe clean coal would win in every area, because clean coal technologies would be so expensive that many renewables would come in cheaper. Prediction · 28 Sep 2007	Technology
Mostly true	Factual	28 Sep 2007	There are scientists who are not paid by anybody who believe climate change does not exist, though the speaker immediately added that "plenty" was a bit of a stretch. Factual · 28 Sep 2007	Science and research methods
Mostly true	Prediction	28 Sep 2007	Carbon capture and sequestration for coal plants will work technically. Prediction · 28 Sep 2007	Technology
Mostly true	Factual	28 Sep 2007	For the first 15 years solar photovoltaic cells were built, they took far more energy to produce than was ever got out of them in their lifetime. Factual · 28 Sep 2007	Technology

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Vinod Khosla

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Prediction Technology

“I believe there will be a mix of biofuels in the marketplace.”

Vinod Khosla, venture capitalist, interviewee 28 September 2007 Interviews - Vinod Khosla (Frontline Heat) (PBS Frontline)

There will be a mix of biofuels in the marketplace.

Resolved true The record shows it happened or was so.

What would count as true or false

No horizon is given, so judge on the market evidence available when the research is done. True: several distinct biofuels are sold commercially at meaningful volumes, such as corn and sugarcane ethanol, biodiesel (FAME), renewable diesel/HVO, sustainable aviation fuel, and cellulosic or advanced ethanol. Mostly true: a mix exists but one fuel dominates heavily while the others are present at modest commercial volumes. Mixed: one fuel accounts for nearly all biofuel sold and the others are marginal. Mostly false: the others are negligible or exist only at pilot or demonstration scale. False: only a single biofuel is sold commercially, or biofuels have essentially left the marketplace.

Evidence

[PDF] GLOBAL BIOENERGY STATISTICS REPORT World Bioenergy Association · 4 November 2026
“Global liquid biofuel production reached a record 192 billion liters in 2024, an 8% increase”
[PDF] GLOBAL BIOENERGY STATISTICS REPORT World Bioenergy Association · 4 November 2026
“Global ethanol production reached 121 billion liters in 2024, representing more than”
[PDF] GLOBAL BIOENERGY STATISTICS REPORT World Bioenergy Association · 4 November 2026
“Biodiesel output peaked at 50 billion liters, while renewable diesel emerged as the fastest-growing segment, peaking at 20 billion liters, almost tenfold since 2014.”
U.S. Bioenergy Statistics USDA Economic Research Service · 20 October 2026
“Significant biofuels include ethanol (made mostly from corn), and biodiesel and renewable diesel (which are made from vegetable oils as well as animal fats, waste oils, and greases).”

Reasoning

The World Bioenergy Association reports that global liquid biofuel production reached 192 billion liters in 2024 (E1). Ethanol made up 121 billion liters of that (E2). Biodiesel reached 50 billion liters and renewable diesel 20 billion liters (E3). USDA ERS also names ethanol, biodiesel and renewable diesel as significant biofuels in the U.S. market (E4). So several distinct biofuels are sold commercially at meaningful volumes. Ethanol is the largest at about 63%, but it does not account for nearly all biofuel sold, which meets the criteria for true.

Cite this claim

Vinod Khosla, “There will be a mix of biofuels in the marketplace.” (said 28 September 2007). Verdict: resolved true. Reliability API, claim c_bd7ee83fb871, method 0.1.0+c876030c. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_bd7ee83fb871

Claims without a verdict

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