16 Indian Americans Land on Forbes' 250 Greatest Living Optimists List

Sixteen Indian Americans made Forbes' list of America's 250 Greatest Living Optimists, a ranking published to mark the United States' 250th anniversary. The list recognizes founders, investors, philanthropists and educators who take risks on new ideas and prioritize long-term value over short-term gains through business, technology and education.

Vinod Khosla ranked highest among the group at No. 13. The founder of Khosla Ventures invests in experimental technologies, including robotics, biotechnology and space manufacturing. Forbes also noted one distinction: his firm was the first to invest in OpenAI.

Who else made the list?

The ranking reads like a cross-section of American venture capital. Workday co-founder Aneel Bhusri placed No. 51. He previously served as a partner at Greylock, where he oversaw investments in cybersecurity company Okta and enterprise software provider ServiceNow.

Hemant Taneja, founder of General Catalyst, ranked No. 81. His firm acquired hospital system Summa Health in 2024 for $515 million, with the aim of bringing advanced technologies into health care. That deal remains one of the clearest examples of a venture firm buying a provider outright rather than just funding startups.

Close behind:

• No. 82: Rajiv Jain, founder of GQG Partners
• No. 88: Asheem Chandna, Greylock Partners investor focused on enterprise software startups
• No. 102: Sanjay Mehrotra, who co-founded SanDisk in 1988 and now serves as CEO of Micron
• No. 118: Navin Chaddha, managing partner at Mayfield Fund
• No. 126: Ravi Mhatre, co-founder of Lightspeed Venture Partners
• No. 128: Shardul Shah, partner at Index Ventures

Mehrotra's presence signals the list's reach beyond investing. He built a semiconductor memory company, sold it into a larger industry, and now runs one of America's major chipmakers — a three-decade arc in one of the country's most strategic industries.

What connects the investors?

Several honorees share a portfolio pattern: software, cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure and artificial intelligence. Naval Ravikant, co-founder of AngelList, ranked No. 150. His platform connects angel investors and venture capital firms with early-stage startups, a piece of market infrastructure that reshaped how seed rounds get done.

Neil Mehta, founder of Greenoaks, placed No. 165. Semil Shah of Haystack ranked No. 169. Salil Deshpande, founder of Uncorrelated Ventures, appeared at No. 194.

Dharmesh Thakker, a former chip designer who became a venture capitalist at Battery Ventures, ranked No. 238. His investments include data analytics company Databricks, one of the most valuable private software firms in the country. His path from designing silicon to funding data infrastructure traces the same technological shift the rest of the list rides.

Where does education fit in?

Two honorees built organizations that scale learning rather than capital. Anant Agarwal, founding CEO of online learning platform edX, ranked No. 201. MIT and Harvard created edX in 2012, and it later merged with education technology company 2U in 2021.

Reshma Saujani, who founded Girls Who Code in 2012 to help address the gender gap in technology, ranked No. 234. According to Forbes, the organization has taught more than 860,000 people — a number that dwarfs the reach of any single fund on the list.

Why the list matters

Forbes framed the selection around long-term thinking. The 16 Indian American honorees span investment, technology and education, and their inclusion reflects the magazine's focus on people backing emerging ideas, businesses and educational initiatives with long-term potential.

The group's combined footprint covers chips, enterprise software, hospitals, coding education and seed-stage finance. That spread shows how deeply Indian American builders now sit inside the machinery of American innovation, from Khosla's early OpenAI bet to Saujani's 860,000 graduates.