Forbes magazine has named venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, 48, in its list of 400 richest Americans for the year 2003 and placed him at the top of the 2003 Forbes Midas list.

At 357 with a wealth of $700 million, Khosla is the only person of Indian origin in the list.

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 and cheap, Khosla has 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.

He holds a bachelor of technology in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi; a master's in biomedical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Khosla is based in Menlo Park, CA, and lives with his wife and four children.