Houston: Fortune magazine has named successful venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, Kleiner Perkins general partner, in its list of 400 richest Americans for the year 2003 while placing him at the top of the 2003 Forbes Midas list.

Khosla, at 48, stands 357th in the list of 400 richest Americans, is the only person in the list with Indian origin.

A Delhiite, Khosla is considered the man with the "golden touch". He co-founded Sun Microsystems and "retired" after Sun's IPO in 1986 at the age of 30, to join venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Among the first to understand that Internet technology and fibre optics could make communications fast, cheap, and easy to install that it would unleash a flood of productivity growth, Khosla has also been the driving force behind many telecom companies.

He serves on the boards of Asera, Corio Inc, Corvis Corp, BigVine.com, Juniper Networks, Redback and QWEST Communications, in addition to several other private companies.

PTI