ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Yoshihisa Suzuki, President & COO; hereinafter "ITOCHU") announces today that it has invested in a fund created by Khosla Ventures (headquartered in the U.S.A.; Vinod Khosla, Founder; hereinafter “Khosla Ventures”), a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, U.S.A.

Khosla Ventures was founded by Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, in 2004 and has already demonstrated an eagerness to invest in new information technology startups, such as Stripe, Instacart and Doordash, and new technology domains, with “social impact” as a key investment criteria. In addition to the information technology domain, healthcare and sustainability are also positioned as important investment domains and ITOCHU expects to have collaboration opportunities with Khosla Ventures in a wide range of business areas.

ITOCHU Group has already engaged in collaborative initiatives with Khosla Ventures. ITOCHU Technology Ventures, Inc., a subsidiary of ITOCHU, invested in Volterra, an investee of Khosla Ventures. Volterra provides a cloud platform with a full set of capabilities required for edge computing, and Itochu Techno-Solutions Corporation has begun handling Volterra’s platform.

ITOCHU’s latest investment in Khosla Ventures is one of many investments in leading venture capital firms around the world, including the U.S.A., Israel and China, made by ITOCHU over the course of many years. By collaborating with startups all over the world, ITOCHU aims to contribute to the development of services both in Japan and overseas, improvement in the earning potential of each operating company and the overall revitalization of the economy.