Rajesh Swaminathan, formerly head of Applied Ventures (AV), the corporate venture capital arm of semiconductor manufacturing technology provider Applied Materials (Amat), has joined venture capital firm Khosla Ventures.
Swaminathan had already held an eight-month stint at Khosla as a consultant from September 2007 before moving to Third Point Ventures, a VC vehicle for investment adviser Third Point where he helped develop its venture and public investment strategy in clean technology and semiconductors.
AV hired Swaminathan as an investment manager in 2009 and tasked him with formulating the unit’s investment thesis surrounding deep technology, before promoting him to investment director five and a half years later.
Global Corporate Venturing selected Swaminathan as a Rising Star in 2017 and he ascended to head AV as senior investment director and general manager when previous head Tony Chao left the parent company in mid-2018.
Shortly before featuring in GCV’s Powerlist in 2019, Swaminathan helped AV set up the $850m Materials Engineering Technology Accelerator (also known as Meta centre) at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in a bid to facilitate semiconductor fab access to portfolio companies.
Formed in 2005, AV invests $50m annually and has a portfolio of 75 companies. It targets deeptech developers in areas including artificial intelligence, augmented reality and virtual reality, life sciences, 3D printing and batteries, providing them with Amat’s materials engineering know-how in addition to funding.
Regarding his new venture partner role at Khosla, Swaminathan said: “[I am] excited about joining Khosla Ventures to continue the journey of investing in deeptech startups. [I am also] immensely grateful to Applied Ventures, Amat and the top-notch entrepreneurs I had the opportunity to partner with over the past decade.”
Photo of Rajesh Swaminathan courtesy of LinkedIn.
