Sven Strohband

Sven is a Partner and Managing Director at Khosla Ventures, where he led the firm’s early investments in Berkshire Grey, GitLab, Hermeus and Rocket Lab, among others. An engineer at heart, Sven is passionate about technologies that forge new industries and accelerate novel user experiences.

Previously, he led technical diligence for six years at Mohr Davidow Ventures for the infrastructure IT and sustainability practices. He also worked across the portfolio to recruit technical talent, run product-market fit experiments and develop fundraising strategies.

Prior to that, Sven led technical projects at the Electronics Research Lab of Volkswagen, ranging from LED front lighting and electrochromic glass to driver-assistance systems and robotics. He was also lead engineer and project lead for the Stanford racing team’s autonomous car Stanley, which won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. Now featured at the Smithsonian Museum, Stanley was the foundation for Google’s self-driving car efforts. He also co-founded and was CEO of AI company Metamind, which is now a key component of Salesforce’s AI product Einstein.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University and a PhD in mechanics and computation from Stanford University. Sven sits on the boards of numerous companies including Berkshire Grey, Rocket Lab, Velo3D, Waabi and ThoughtSpot.