Vinod Khosla likes to buck trends. So it’s hardly a surprise that when some startups are reporting difficulty raising funds and the solar industry is facing an uncertain future in the wake of the Solyndra bankruptcy disaster, the Sun Microsystems cofounder has managed to raise $1.05 billion to funnel money into cleantech, IT mobile, and Internet companies.

This is hardly Khosla’s first venture into such territory. In January of 2010, Khosla Ventures raised $1.3 billion, primarily to invest in cleantech. Since its founding in 2004, it has invested in about 50 companies in the space.

His mantra so far is to expect failure at times, but to push on and expect monumental success with the companies that do resonate with investors, the marketplace, and consumers. “We don’t mind failing, but do care that the impact be material if we do succeed; and we believe that our willingness to fail gives us an ability to succeed,” he told the San Francisco Business Times. “We believe in helping entrepreneurs build companies with high impact and high option value that are not subject to traditional financial metrics.”

But some critics, like entrepreneur and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel—who argues that investing in Cleantech is a waste of money because it’s so muddled in government red tape and policies (case in point, Solyndra)—would rather see money like this flow to cloud-based startups, where it doesn’t take so much money to scale a company.

“Cleantech is an increasingly large disaster that people in Silicon Valley aren’t even talking about anymore,” Thiel said recently, according to GreenBeat. “The failure in energy and transportation points to a larger failure in clean energy—we aren’t moving any faster, literally, than we were when modern airplanes first came out.”

Thiel may have a point. Cleantech investing dropped more than 40 percent earlier this year, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Still, Khosla believes that he can make a difference. And with his diversified approach—and deep pockets—maybe he can.

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