Name: Eric Schmidt (Net Worth: $39.2 Billion, Forbes, 7/31/26)
Title: CEO, Relativity Space
Chairman of the Board, SandBoxAQ
Founder, Bolt Data & Energy
Industry Affiliation
- Schmidt spent nearly 20 years at Google and its parent company, Alphabet Inc.
- Google
- CEO 2001-2011
- Executive Chairman 2011-2015
- Alphabet Inc.
- Executive Chairman 2015-2017
- Technical Advisor 2017-2020
- Google
- Schmidt believes AI is the “most powerful technology that will be invented in our lifetimes.” To that end, Schmidt has invested heavily in AI through his private and philanthropic ventures.
- Schmidt co-founded Innovation Endeavors, a venture capital firm invested in technology companies in the AI, energy, and computing space.
- Schmidt is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of SandBoxAQ, an AI and quantum computing company.
- SandBoxAQ is facing an extortion and wrongful termination lawsuit brought by a former chief of staff, Robert Bender. The suit alleged that SandBoxAQ CEO, Jack Hidary, misused corporate resources, inflated revenue figures to investors, and engaged in sexual misconduct. Bender also claimed his termination was retaliation for bringing these concerns forward and that he is being pressured to settle the lawsuit.
- Schmidt and his wife Wendy founded Schmidt Sciences in 2024 out of their previous philanthropic project, Schmidt Futures. Schmidt Sciences is a philanthropic organization that funds “ground-breaking research” and elevates “high-risk, under-funded work”, including artificial intelligence. Schmidt Sciences awards the AI2050 academic fellowship, which provides funding for AI research. The Schmidts pledged $125 million over five years for AI2050.
- Schmidt Futures indirectly paid the salaries of two staff in Biden’s White House Office and Science and Technology Policy and the salary of the OSTP chief of staff. More than a dozen officials in the OSTP were associates of Schmidt, including former and current Schmidt employees.
- Schmidt launched a $10 million venture fund to support research on AI safety challenges. The program offers funding, compute power, and access to frontier AI models.
- In 2026, Schmidt founded Bolt Data and Energy, an AI and data center startup to address the energy constraint on scaling AI. Schmidt said the company’s goal is to “build the largest and most efficient network of AI data centers in the world, powering the next generation of artificial intelligence and fueling the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”
- Schmidt went before Congress to encourage policies for new energy generation to power the AI boom. He told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that the AI industry needs “the energy in all forms, renewable, non-renewable, whatever. It needs to be there, and it needs to be there quickly.”
- Schmidt claimed that energy demand for AI computing will be “infinite”, and meeting that demand should trump any considerations for slowing climate change. Speaking at the Special Competitive Studies Project AI+Energy Summit, he told the audience, “We’re not going to hit the climate goals anyway because we’re not organized to do it — and the way to do it is with the ways that we’re talking about now — and yes, the needs in this area will be a problem. But I’d rather bet on AI solving the problem than constraining it and having the problem if you see my plan.”
- Schmidt’s stance on climate goals lacks nuance. Climate scientists have warned than any additional increases in global average temperature, even as small as a tenth of a degree, will have catastrophic effects on the global climate and lead to more severe weather disasters.
- Schmidt’s stance on climate goals lacks nuance. Climate scientists have warned than any additional increases in global average temperature, even as small as a tenth of a degree, will have catastrophic effects on the global climate and lead to more severe weather disasters.
- During a commencement speech at the University of Arizona, Schmidt told the graduating student audience they will have to adapt and shape how AI will be used, telling them, “The question is not whether AI will shape the world. It will. The question is whether you will have shaped artificial intelligence.” His remarks were met with loud boos from the students.
Revolver/Government Experience
- While at Google, Schmidt was a member of Obama’s Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), an “advisory group of the nation’s leading scientists and engineers who directly advise the President and Executive Office of the President” on matters related to science and tech policy.
- Schmidt was the inaugural chairman of the Defense Innovation Board (DIB), a Department of Defense initiative to develop relationships and borrow expertise from Silicon Valley to make the Pentagon more “innovative and adaptive.”
- Under Schmidt’s leadership, DIB recommendations helped launch Project Maven in 2017, the Pentagon’s AI program to develop “computer vision algorithms” to help military personnel analyze the vast amounts of captured drone footage. Google, Schmidt’s former employer, was the Pentagon’s original AI contractor and declined to renew the contract when it expired after more than 3,000 employees signed an open letter protesting the company’s involvement with the project.
- Project Maven has since expanded to include AI-guided targeting software, AI-enabled planning and execution, and generative AI capabilities.
- Project Maven has since expanded to include AI-guided targeting software, AI-enabled planning and execution, and generative AI capabilities.
- Under Schmidt’s leadership, DIB recommendations helped launch Project Maven in 2017, the Pentagon’s AI program to develop “computer vision algorithms” to help military personnel analyze the vast amounts of captured drone footage. Google, Schmidt’s former employer, was the Pentagon’s original AI contractor and declined to renew the contract when it expired after more than 3,000 employees signed an open letter protesting the company’s involvement with the project.
- Under Biden, Schmidt served as Chairman of the National Security Commission on AI (NSCAI), advising the President and Congress on national security matters related to AI.
- CNBC reported that “Schmidt and entities connected to him made more than 50 investments in AI companies” while he led the NSCAI.
- When the NSCAI was dissolved in 2021, Schmidt released a final report recommending the Defense Department be “AI-ready” by 2025. To achieve this, the report advocated for the tech industry to play a major role, saying AI technology is “ripe for public-private partnerships” and that the “government must become a better customer and a better partner” to the private sector.
- Schmidt was a member of the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology, an independent group of lawmakers and advisors tasked with making recommendations on emerging biotech and bio-manufacturing to the military.
Government Affairs
- Since 2023, SandBoxAQ has spent $450,000 lobbying the federal government. SandboxAQ has lobbied Congress, the White House, and federal agencies on AI and quantum computing policy.
Image Credit: “Eric Schmidt” by nosillacast, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
For more check out AI Villains and The Trump Administration