Investor Vinod Khosla offers contrarian take on AI and climate challenges

The biggest threat to America’s competitiveness in artificial intelligence and climate tech isn’t the Trump administration’s cuts to renewable power tax breaks or electricity shortages for data centers, says Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures.

It’s immigration policy.

“Talent drives everything,” said the billionaire technologist.

But President Trump’s aggressive immigration actions are discouraging foreign-born people from coming to the U.S., including skilled workers with visas, because of the hostile environment, Khosla said. That reduces the import of highly educated innovators who can help “solve climate and other technology problems,” he added.

Khosla shared his take on tech and sustainability issues on Tuesday at Bloomberg Green Seattle, a three-day event focused on climate change that attracted leaders from industry, government, nonprofits, startups and environmental organizations.

The backdrop to the conference was a heat wave predicted to send temperatures into the 90s in the normally more temperate city.

Read one for more from Khosla’s conversation with Akshat Rathi, a senior reporter with Bloomberg Green:

‘Very bullish on fusion’

Khosla predicted that within five years, “nobody will be talking about alternatives to fusion as a power source for the planet for the next 50 years.”

His fund has backed Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Realta Fusion, and he expects that one of the dozen “reasonable efforts” working to commercial power from smashing atoms together will soon demonstrate viability. “Only one needs to work to solve the planet’s energy problem,” he added.

Embracing risk

In order to solve big challenges such as developing cost-competitive, scalable, low-carbon technologies, Khosla argues for taking big chances in pursuit of breakthroughs. He cited his fund’s pursuit of green steel as an example.

“I don’t mind the probability of failure,” he said, “but I want the consequences of success to be consequential.”

Look to 2050

Many in the climate sector argue that the world can slow the planet’s warming by aggressively deploying cleaner technologies that are available today. Khosla disagrees, calling it “a silly notion.”

“If you’re deploying poor technologies more broadly, we have less money to deploy breakthrough technologies and less money to invest in breakthrough technology,” he said, adding that the world should focus on getting to zero by 2050 and put less attention on 2030 goals. But he did acknowledge the threat of reaching tipping points before the half-century mark, which would accelerate climate change and makes it harder to slow.

Untroubled by axed tax credits

GOP policies are slashing tax credits from the Biden administration that supported deployment of wind and solar energy. Khosla said there are better uses for public dollars than subsidies for these sufficiently mature sectors. He added that next-generation nuclear power also doesn’t need tax breaks — and that its biggest hurdle to expansion is NIMBY-ism.

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